This sounds like a great way to "translate" from library forms to  
wikipedia name forms. But for on-the-fly use I wonder if it wouldn't  
be more efficient to eliminate the "middle man." Karen, can you say a  
little about what it took to link library names to WP? Was it a  
one-step, two-step, etc.?

There is a script that I've seen used, although it doesn't seem to be  
production ready:

   https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js

One interesting note from the OL experience of linking to WP:  
generally you need to "re-reverse" the names to get a match: from  
Twain, Mark to Mark Twain. But for some names that isn't the case:  
Mao, Tse-Tung. Edward Betts used Wikipedia to determine which names do  
not get "re-reversed".

The OL code for its wikipedia lookup is at:
    
https://github.com/openlibrary/openlibrary/tree/master/openlibrary/catalog/wikipedia

It, however, runs against dumps rather than an API.

kc

Quoting Karen Coombs <[log in to unmask]>:

> Graham,
>
> I'd advocate using WorldCat Identities to get to the appropriate url
> for dbpedia. Each Identity record has a wikipedia element in it that
> you could use to link to either Wikipedia or dbpedia.
>
> If you want to see an example of this in action you can check out the
> Author Info demo I did for code4lib 2010 here -
> http://www.librarywebchic.net/mashups/author_info/info_about_this_author.php?OCLCNum=32939031
>
> The code for this demo is available for download at -
> http://www.worldcat.org/devnet/code/devnetDemos/trunk/
>
> You'll want the author_info folder and identity_info.php
>
> Karen
>
> Karen A. Coombs
> Product Manager
> OCLC Developer Network
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 4:40 AM, graham <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> I need to be able to take author data from a catalogue record and use it
>> to look up the author on Wikipedia on the fly. So I may have birth date
>> and possibly year of death in addition to (one spelling of) the name,
>> the title of one book the author wrote etc.
>>
>> I know there are various efforts in progress that will improve the
>> current situation, but as things stand at the moment what is the best*
>> way to do this?
>>
>> 1. query wikipedia for as much as possible, parse and select the best
>> fitting result
>>
>> 2. go via dbpedia/freebase and work back from there
>>
>> 3. use VIAF and/or OCLC services
>>
>> 4. Other?
>>
>> (I have no experience of 2-4 yet :-(
>>
>>
>> Thanks
>> Graham
>> * 'best' being constrained by:
>> - need to do this in real-time
>> - need to avoid dependence on services which may be taken away
>> or charged for
>> - being able to justify to librarians as reasonably accurate :-)
>>
>



-- 
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet