Karen,

This doesn't relate to the API specifically, but I'm very interested in 
the statement, "Open Library now has Works defined."

We've just recently encountered issues loading OCA records for journals 
we've scanned back into our local ILS, because we have to add an 856 for 
each journal volume that was scanned to the parent bibliographic record 
(in the most recent case, we had something like 160 856 fields in the 
record, which our ILS objected to). As in institution, we're not 
particularly interested in creating locally hosted splash pages for this 
digitized content.

What seems like would make more sense for us is to link to a Work record 
in Open Library or Internet Archive which can then direct users to all 
volumes digitized for that Work. I searched this title in Open Library 
and found individual results for the various years of the journal, so it 
didn't seem like that kind of aggregated record was being exposed to 
users at this point.

See here for an example: 
http://openlibrary.org/search?q=polytechnisches+Journal

Do you think a Work record page in Open Library that we could link to 
from our local systems would be an effective solution to this problem? 
Anybody have other ideas?

-emiliy

CODE4LIB automatic digest system wrote:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date:    Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:22:41 -0700
> From:    Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Works API
>
> Open Library now has Works defined, and is looking to develop an API  
> for their retrieval. It makes obvious sense that when a Work is  
> retrieved via the API, that the data output would include links to the  
> Editions that link to that Work. Here are a few possible options:
>
> 1) Retrieve Work information (author, title, subjects, possibly  
> reviews, descriptions, first lines) alone
> 2) Retrieve Work information + OL identifiers for all related Editions
> 3) Retrieve Work information + OL identifiers + any other identifiers  
> related to the Edition (ISBN, OCLC#, LCCN)
> 4) Retrieve Work information and links to Editions with full text / scans
>
> Well, you can see where I'm going with this. What would be useful?
>
> kc
>
>   

-- 
Emily Lynema
Associate Department Head
Information Technology, NCSU Libraries
919-513-8031
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