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A kind fellow on NGC4Lib suggested I mention this here. 

 

I'm developing a 3D "fly-through" interface for an LCSH organized
collection but I'm having difficulty finding a library willing to "give"
me a subset of their data (i.e., subject headings (broad to narrow
terms) and the bib records to which they have been assigned).  They just
don't see why they should help me.  Their value added isn't clear to
them since this is experimental and I have no wish turn this into a
business (I like to build and test solutions...selling them isn't my
piece of pie).

 

I'm planning to import the data into Access or SQL Server (depending how
much I get) and partly normalize the bib records so subject terms for
each item are in a separate one-to-many table.  I also need the
authority data to establish where each subject term (and its associated
bib records) resides in the broad to narrow term hierarchy...this is
more useful in the sciences which seems to have 4-6 levels deep.  

 

Jonathan Rochkind (kind fellow in question) suggested the following

 

-I could access data directly through Z39.5...

-I could "take" LC subject authority data in MARC format from a certain
grey-area-legal source

-I could take bib records (and their associated LCSH terms) from 

http://simile.mit.edu/wiki/Dataset_Collection Particularly:
http://simile.mit.edu/rdf-test-data/barton/compressed/

In particular, the "Barton" collection. That will be in the MODS format,
which will actually be easier to work with than library standard MARC. 

Or http://www.archive.org/details/marc_records_scriblio_net

 

Obviously I'm not looking forward to parsing MARC data although I've
heard there are scripts for this.  

 

Additional suggestions and/or comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks a bunch,

 

Charles-Antoine Julien

Ph.D Candidate

School of Information Studies

McGill University