This came up at the CONTENTdm Birds of a Feather lunch after the Texas
Conference on Digital Libraries yesterday. One of my suggestions was to
develop an extension to OpenRefine that would take a URI and return the
correct string value. Alternatively, an Excel VBA macro could be done to do
something similar within a spreadsheet.

Both of these, of course, would require an API that would provide a string
value when presented with a URI. Is there such an API for VIAF and FAST?
Other sources?

Danielle


On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 12:34 PM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> 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
>