List of APIs

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Event Date: Oct 16 2009 – Oct 17 2009
Event Website: Event Webpage
City: Toronto, Ontario
Country: Canada
Primary Contact Name: William J. Turkel
Contact Email: william.j.turkel@gmail.com

Roy Tennant and Owen Stephens compiled an extensive list of library-related APIs.

Library services

  • Amazon
  • Book Cover Images (LibraryThing)
  • Classify (OCLC) – Find Dewey and Library of Congress classification numbers for library items (e.g., books, DVDs, etc.).
  • COPAC Search (SRU) and MODS XML fetch by identifer (major University and National Libraries in the UK and Ireland, including the British Library)
  • DBPedia – Structured information from Wikipedia
  • DOI Resolution (CrossRef) – Requires an account
  • Google Book Search API – link to items in GBS, and find out about their availability
  • Guess OPAC System (OCLC) – An experimental service that tries to intelligently detect the OPAC vendor and its ISBN,ISSN, and OCLCNUM linking template.
  • Hathi Trust – Library-hosted books digitized by Google
  • High-Level Thesaurus (HILT) Project – Cross-searching of various controlled vocabularies and terminologies.
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings (Library of Congress) – LCSH as linked data using SKOS
  • LibraryThing JSON Books API
  • LibraryThing Web Services API (LibraryThing)
  • Metadata Crosswalk Service (OCLC, Experimental) – Transforms metadata from one format to another.
  • OpenCalais (Thomson Reuters) – Creates rich semantic metadata for the content you submit
  • Open Library
  • OpenURL Gateway (OCLC) – delivers “Where Are You From?” resolver services via portable and institution-independent OpenURL links
  • pewbot (Huddersfield University Library) – “People who borrowed this also borrowed that” service
  • Scopus (Elsevier) – Search this massive journal article database
  • Talis Platform
  • Terminology services (OCLC) – Various controlled vocabularies, including LCSH, MeSH, and TGM
  • ThingISBN (LibraryThing) – Takes an ISBN and returns a list of ISBNs from the same “work” (i.e., other editions and translations)
  • ThingLang (LibraryThing) – Takes an ISBN and returns the language of the book
  • ThingTitle (LibraryThing) – Takes a title and returns a list ISBNs from the most likely LibraryThing “work,” the LibraryThing title and a link to the LibraryThing work page
  • Virtual International Authority File (Library of Congress (LC), the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB), the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and OCLC)
  • Worldcat Identities (OCLC) – Get information about people/organizations listed in Worldcat
  • WorldCat Registry and detail (OCLC) – Find and retrieve basic information about institutions and consortia profiled in the WorldCat Registry, not limited to OCLC members
  • WorldCat Search Service (OCLC) – API to the largest bibliographic database in the world
  • xISBN (OCLC) – Find all the ISBNs plus edition and other metadata related to a work
  • xISSN (OCLC) – Find all the related ISSNs
  • xOCLCNUM (OCLC) – Find all OCLC Numbers plus edition and other data related to a work

Individual Library Catalogs

Directories

Tools & Specifications

 

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