But you're just going to have to title search on freebase, right? (Same 
functionality may be avail on IMBD directly without going through 
freebase, but more importantly...)

There are frequently movies sharing the same title with an entirely 
different movie. Maybe title/year search instead?

But movies wind up with several 'publication dates' (date of release in 
theaters, date of release for a DVD or videotape, different dates of 
release for different manifestations. Who knows what date you've got in 
your 'source' record you're trying to link to, and if that's going to 
match the date(s) in the freebase record.

I'm not sure of a great way to do this. Metadata matching is a bitch.

A FEW of our library bibliographic records actually have a UPC/EAN in 
them for videos. (ISBN is actually a subset of UPC/EAN, at least since 
ISBN-13. But I think DVDs and videocassettes sold aren't going to have 
an ISBN usually, but usually will have a UPC/EAN).

If you've got one of those, you might be able to search on that in 
freebase? (even if you can't in IMBD directly? here's where freebase 
might rule).  Relies on freebase having that UPC/EAN in it's database, 
for the particular manifestation you've got a record for.   Not sure the 
prospects of that. And few (but some) of our records have UPC/EAN anyway.

In general here though, this is another reminder that in the present 
environment, unambiguous identifiers RULE.  Like ISBN, UPC/EAN, etc.  
One of the most valuable things catalogers can add to records. I really 
wish it would become common practice to add a UPC/EAN to all dvd/video 
records where the item-in-hand has one on it. Even if that means 
sacrificing some other things, I know cataloger time is a precious 
resource. But UPC/EAN should be considered very very high value, it 
could enable all sorts of value-added services and linking to external 
databases.

Jonathan

On 4/27/2011 11:09 AM, Sean Hannan wrote:
> If I were doing this, I'd use the Freebase (freebase.com) API and write a
> little app that returns the IMDB title stem (ex: tt0460791) for each of the
> films you're trying to match up.
>
> -Sean
>
>
> On 4/27/11 10:56 AM, "R. Levi"<[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>
>> I would like to add a link to IMDB for the feature  films that we have in our
>> catalog.  IMDB doesn't appear to have  ISBNs.  Is there a way to link the MARC
>> record with the IMDB record  without manually searching IMDB to find each
>> movie?  Thanks, Rich