On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:12 AM, Coombs, Karen
A<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I hate to say it but as someone who is working with the WorldCat Search API
> at this point I sure could create code that used Open Library data faster if
> you used one of the same metadata formats that the WorldCat Search API uses.
> While the two services seem different, (I haven't really figured out how to
> effectively search with the Open Library API) there is a learning curve just
> working with different metadata formats. It would be good not to have to
> teach my staff about another format if I don't have to. That being said, I'd
> love to see MODS, that is if it is really good MODS where names are broken
> out into their component parts (given, family) and roles are included.

For the sake of providing an alternate perspective, while it would be
nice to see an OpenSearch description for OpenLibrary to complement
the WorldCat Search API I think it would be a mistake to suggest that
OpenLibrary should use SRU and/or MARCXML as an output format just to
provide some commonality w/ OCLC. Perhaps there is more to Karen's
suggestion though.

OpenLibrary is already using the DublinCore vocabulary in its
metadata, just like WorldCat Search API, which seems enough to me. I'm
personally pretty interested to see OpenLibrary taking a more organic
approach to vocabulary selection, mixing and matching vocabulary
elements rather than imposing a particular metadata world-view. I'm
also pleased to see OpenLibrary's approach to thinking about the
resources they are publishing on the web ("A URL For Every Book"), and
providing metadata for those resources in a way that fits in
seamlessly with the web.

//Ed