Thanks, Richard. I ask because it's one of the most common questions 
that I get -- often about WorldCat, but in general about any source of 
URIs -- "How do I connect my data (text forms) to their URIs?" And these 
questions usually come from library or archive projects with little or 
no programming staff. So it seems like we need to be able to answer that 
question so that people can get linked up. In fact, it seems to me that 
the most pressing need right now is an easy way (or one that someone 
else can do for you at a reasonable cost) to connect the text string 
"identifiers" that we have to URIs. I envision something like what we 
went through when we moved from AACR name forms to AACR2 name forms, and 
libraries were able to send their MARC records to a service that 
returned the records with the new name form. In this case, though, such 
a service would return the data with the appropriate URIs added. (In the 
case of MARC, in the $0 subfield.)

It's great that the "big guys" like LC and OCLC are providing URIs for 
resources. But at the moment I feel like it's grapes dangling just 
beyond the reach of the folks we want to connect to. Any ideas on how to 
make this easy are welcome. And I do think that there's great potential 
for an enterprising start-up to provide an affordable service for 
libraries and archives. Of course, an open source "pass in your data in 
x or y format and we'll return it with URIs embedded" would be great, 
but I think it would be reasonable to charge for such a service.

kc


On 4/30/14, 9:59 AM, Richard Wallis wrote:
> To unpack the several questions lurking in Karen’s question.
>
> As to being able to use the WorldCat Works data/identifiers there is no
> difference between a or b - it is ODC-BY licensed data.
>
> Getting a Work URI may be easier for a) as they should be able to identify
> the OCLC Number and hence use the linked data from it’s URI <
> http://worldcat.org/oclc/{ocn}> to pick up the link to it’s work.
>
> Tools such as xISBN <http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/doc/api.htm> can
> step you towards identifier lookups and are openly available for low volume
> usage.
>
> Citation lookup is more a bib lookup feature, that you could get an OCLC
> Number from. One of colleagues may be helpful on the particulars of this.
>
> Apologies for being WorldCat specific, but Karen did ask.
>
> ~Richard.
>
>
> On 30 April 2014 17:15, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> My question has to do with discoverability. Let's say that I have a
>> bibliographic database and I want to add the OCLC work identifiers to it.
>> Obviously I don't want to do it by hand. I might have ISBNs, but in some
>> cases I will have a regular author/title-type citation.
>>
>> and let's say that I am asking this for two different institutions:
>> a) is an OCLC member institution
>> b) is not
>>
>> Thanks,
>> kc
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 4/30/14, 8:47 AM, Dan Scott wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 11:37 PM, Roy Tennant <[log in to unmask]>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This has now instead become a reasonable recommendation
>>>>> concerning ODC-BY licensing [3] but the confusion and uncertainty
>>>>> about which records an OCLC member may redistribute remains.
>>>>>
>>>>> [3] http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/2012/201248.en.html
>>>>>
>>>> Allow me to try to put this confusion and uncertainty to rest once and
>>>> for
>>>> all:
>>>>
>>>> ALL THE THINGS. ALL.
>>>>
>>>> At least as far as we are concerned. I think it's well past time to put
>>>> the
>>>> past in the past.
>>>>
>>> That's great, Roy. That's a *lot* simpler than parsing the
>>> recommendations, WCRR, community norms, and such at [A, B] :)
>>>
>>>   Meanwhile, we have just put nearly 200 million works records up as linked
>>>> open data. [1], [2], [3]. If that doesn't rock the library open linked
>>>> data
>>>> world, then no one is paying attention.
>>>> Roy
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://oclc.org/en-US/news/releases/2014/201414dublin.html
>>>> [2]
>>>> http://dataliberate.com/2014/04/worldcat-works-197-million-
>>>> nuggets-of-linked-data/
>>>> [3] http://hangingtogether.org/?p=3811
>>>>
>>> Yes, that is really awesome. But Laura was asking about barriers to
>>> open metadata, so damn you for going off-topic with PR around a lack
>>> of barriers to some metadata (which, for those who have not looked
>>> yet, have a nice ODC-BY licensing statement at the bottom of a given
>>> Works page) :)
>>>
>>> A. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use.en.html
>>> B. http://oclc.org/worldcat/community/record-use/data-
>>> licensing/questions.en.html
>>>
>> --
>> Karen Coyle
>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>> skype: kcoylenet
>>
>
>

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