The main problem as I see it is that Series are Hard; Let's Go Shopping.
The way that series get cataloged can be kind of mindboggling, and I think
one of the advantages of NoveList is that they define their series in a way
that Normal Humans (as opposed to catalogers) would find reasonable. Though
of course, this is limited to fiction in the case of NoveList.

Not sure how good LibraryThing is at the same procedure, but it might be an
alternative. A little bird tells me that NoveList is available through the
standard EBSCO APIs as long as you have API access configured in your
subscription.

On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 9:00 AM, David J. Fiander <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> On 13-04-08 13:11, Andreas Orphanides wrote:
> > I should know this, since my wife works there... but does NoveList have
> an
> > API?
>
> I suspect not. LibraryThing might be a better option for this, for a
> variety of reasons, not least is its API. But the real barrier is the
> lack of a good API for the library's holdings information. This really
> is a matter of gluing together two or three systems, none of which is
> easy to use programmatically.
>
> - David
>
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 12:56 PM, David J. Fiander <[log in to unmask]
> >wrote:
> >
> >> A friend on friendfeed (no, it's not dead, and yes there's an active
> >> librarian community there) who works in a public library complains
> thusly:
> >>
> >>> I have decided that it's a goal of mine that for all series in the
> >>> fiction collection that circulate reasonably well, I want us to have
> >>> the full series. Right now, this is a cumbersome and annoying task. I
> >>> have to identify the series (because not all of them are cataloged as
> >>> such), see what we have, check the circulation, then check NoveList
> >>> and compare the lists and look for gaps.
> >>
> >> This strikes me as an interesting problem, but one that I can't devote
> >> any time to now.
> >>
> >> And there's the related question of why this is as difficult as it seems
> >> to be.
> >>
>