Nothing to add to all the excellent advice about scraping/alternatives to
scraping, but just to say that as someone who has written scrapers for
library catalogues (not for the whole catalogue but to get specific
information) then I heartily wish that libraries would advertise APIs
(where available) or data dumps (if on offer)  much more widely - when I
write a scraper, it's because I can't find an API, not because I don't want
to use an API.

Best wishes

Owen


On Tue, 30 Nov 2021 at 13:25, Mark Watkins <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Adding to what others have said, an API will likely give you better (and
> faster!) results than scraping. Not sure if the Harvard Library Data covers
> what you need, but their data is available via API (or download), for free,
> in a legal and rights-respecting manner. Amazing resource.
>
> https://library.harvard.edu/services-tools/harvard-library-apis-datasets
>


-- 
Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
Email: [log in to unmask]