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I would second the prudence of taking advantage of wheels already invented if you can.  

One thing  I missed, though, in the earlier parts of this thread was  why you wanted to use Dewey, Tom?   

Depending on the nature of the items in the collection, you may be better off going  with LC   classification.  There could be  more readily available complete copy bearing LC numbers and no Dewey numbers.       Going LC  would avoid any potential need to later manually tweak the Dewey numbers you get from LC   (a possibility you mentioned) - or the complete disruption should a new edition of Dewey revise substantially your area...     



Jonathan LeBreton
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-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 10:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Dewey code

On Aug 8, 2014, at 10:13 PM, Riley Childs wrote:

> Ok, so you want to access LC data to get Dewey decimal numbers? You need to use a z39.50 client to pull the record, you can do it with marc edit but it is labor intensive.  You would need to roll your own solution for this or use classify.oclc.org to get book info (this doesn't give you API access). Your best bet is classify.oclc.org.
> 
> That aside:
> Honestly you might be better off running with something like Koha, writing a home brew library system is no cake walk, trust me I know from 2 years of experience trying to code one and ultimately moving to koha. Koha can be run on a VPS (Digital Ocean is what i would use) or on an old PC in the corner. I am in a situation similar to yours if you want to contact me off list I can give you some advice.


I 100% agree -- you'd be better off going with something intended for personal libraries (eg Delicious Library) and give it a dedicated machine before trying to roll your own.

oss4lib hasn't been updated in a while, but Lyrasis is maintaining foss4lib.org as a catalog of free & open source library software, and has a 'ILS feature comparison tool' which lists feature differences between Koha and Evergreen:

	http://ils.foss4lib.org/

-Joe