Karen,

I'll have to get Ralph LeVan or Thom Hickey to comment on how we were
able to create the Wikipedia links in Identities. I don't know the
details just that the data is there.

Karen

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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
>