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Hey thanks everybody, I've been too busy to dig into any of your suggestions but hugely appreciated. This group is awesome. @Amanda, I actually remember signing up for Small Demons in beta and it died before I got a chance to really explore it. @Thomas, LibraryThing's charactername field looks very promising if the list consistently gives main characters first billing. @Shaun Trajectory is definitely interesting, though I've not thought of a use case yet. @Karen true about the authority problem - unless publishers wrap this sort of info in ebook metadata? @Joshua Like LibraryThing, its unclear if the character lists are actually prioritized by significance. @Joel Shame those resources look rather dusty. As for an IMDB for books, I think LibraryThing or Amazon are better positioned than anyone. @Brooke I'm absolutely certain its doable, but as @Amy points out its a pain in the ass. Even if I simply take @Alexander's suggestion of the Le Monde list, I have to scrape and scan and scrub for something that, in a world where we can have nice things, this already exists in a rough-and-ready incomplete but off-the-shelf dataset. It kinda blows my mind it doesn't. Not to mention there's the other step I mentioned, which is matching them up with Gutenberg.org pages. I'll keep you guys updated as I dig into all your ideas. Cheers! Dave On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 4:17 AM, Thomas Guignard <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > The LibraryThing API could also be used to retrieve what they call "Common > Knowledge" tags, including character names but also place names etc. > > Example: > > https://www.librarything.com/services/rest/1.1/?method=librarything.ck.getwork&id=2773690&apikey=d231aa37c9b4f5d304a60a3d0ad1dad4 > (using the example API key) > Look for the "characternames" field. > > As far as I can tell, however, there is no way to determine which of the > characters are the "lead male" and "lead female" character short of > assuming that the top listed characters are in effect the lead ones. Also, > the API calls are limited to 1000 a day. But maybe an avenue to consider. > > t. > > On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 2:15 PM, Shaun Ellis <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > > > Another interesting startup in this area is Trajectory. > > > > Here's a list of Classics/Fiction via their JSON API (doc=isbn): > > http://api.trajectory.com/api/v1/search/?q=&c=Fiction%20%2F% > > 20Classics&limit=568 > > > > Here's a "human readable" view: > > http://www.trajectory.com/search/?q=&facets&c=Fiction% > > 20%2F%20Classics&limit=568 > > > > -Shaun > > > > > > On 4/14/15 11:07 AM, Amanda French wrote: > > > >> What you *did* need for this interesting project was Small Demons, which > >> was a for-profit company that was creating linked data from books -- > here's > >> an article about it: http://www.theverge.com/2013/ > >> 3/1/4043298/building-an-atlas-for-books-with-small-demons > >> > >> But it shut down in 2013, and I have no idea what happened to the data. > >> It might all have been commercial and proprietary, anyway. Article on > its > >> closure: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-small- > >> demons-to-close-unless-buyer-appears-20131106-story.html > >> > >> Amanda > >> > >> > >> On 4/13/15 10:12 PM, davesgonechina wrote: > >> > >>> So I have this idea I'd like to do for a hobby project, but it requires > >>> finding a table that lists a classic novel, a Gutenberg.org link to an > >>> > >>> <snip> > >> > >> >