Ulrich's API

Bibliographic Wilderness has a very informative posting Ulrich’s has an API included with your ulrichsweb subscription: A Review.

It turns out if you subscribe to Ulrichsweb, there is an API you are already licensed to use. The API does expose a few key pieces of data you may find useful (such as a boolean value for ‘refereed’). It sadly lacks a few things included in the Ulrichsweb directory itself that would be awfully useful (such as review text).

There is very little evidence on the web that the API even exists.

Good introduction. Provides info on how to get access and what data is available.

Pic2Shop iPhone app

OCLC has announced a library addition to the Pic2Shop iPhone app.

In case you haven't heard the news from earlier this week, the Pic2Shop iPhone app has recently done a new release that now incorporates library results, thanks to the WorldCat Search API and WorldCat Registry APIs.

WorldCat API

Exciting news from OCLC.

Now anyone and everyone can create apps and mash-ups using library data from WorldCat, the world's largest library catalog. Because the WorldCat Basic API is here!

This new API is a simplified version of the WorldCat Search API. Send it RESTful URI queries in OpenSearch, and it retrieves results in RSS or Atom. The WorldCat Basic API can support up to 1,000/queries per day for noncommercial use. In addition, the WorldCat Basic API provides:

• Information about books, videos, music and more in WorldCat
• Information about authors, titles, ISBNs and OCLC numbers
• Standard bibliographic citation formats in HTML (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian)
• A link back to WorldCat.org for geographically-sorted library information
• An easy way to include library results in comparison-shopping Web sites, mobile or Facebook apps

To gain access to the WorldCat Basic API, select the WorldCat Basic API on the WorldCat Affiliates Tools page. Sign in with your WorldCat Affiliates account (or create a new one) and then you'll be taken to a specific site where your individual WS Key will be auto-generated. Note if you already have a WorldCat Search API WSKey through your institution, then you do NOT need a WorldCat Basic API WSKey.

WorldCat Search API and WorldCat Basic API

Positive news from OCLC about the WorldCat API.

New limit by holdings for WorldCat Search API
Good news for WorldCat Search API WSkey holders. The WorldCat Search API has been enhanced. You can now limit the results returned to an individual library's holding symbol, without authenticating the application's users, at all service levels. In lots of discussions with developers, people have asked for this feature. Yay, now it's here.

With this functionality update, the eligibility requirements for the WorldCat Search API have also been updated.

NB: ALL 200+ current WorldCat Search API WSKeys will remain active through at least Sept 1, 2010. This eligibility change should affect very few future requests for service. In addition, there is even more good news if your library doesn't currently qualify--or if you're a developer who is not connected to a library.

WorldCat Basic API planned
For a long time now, OCLC has wanted to provide a general Web service to WorldCat in addition to WorldCat.org. This wish is now becoming a reality. Later this year you'll have a simple API into WorldCat that anyone and everyone in the world can use, for noncommercial use. Called the WorldCat Basic API, it provides a mashable access point for lightweight apps built by developers who may or may not have ties to the library community.

The WorldCat Basic API is planned to use OpenSearch and return feeds in Atom and RSS. Results include OCLC number links to WorldCat.org, ISBNs and formatted citations.

We're excited to announce these improvements and updates, expanding the range of developers able to include WorldCat and library data in their apps. Sign up for the Developer Network listserv (WC-DEVNET-L) if you haven't already, to hear when the WorldCat Basic API is available.

OpenSearch and unAPI Enrichs the Cataloges

SeeAlso: A Simple Linkserver Protocol by Jakob Voss appears in Ariadne no. 57 (October 2008)

In recent years the principle of Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) has grown increasingly important in digital library systems. More and more core functionalities are becoming available in the form of Web-based, standardised services which can be combined dynamically to operate across a broader environment [1]. Standard APIs for searching (SRU [2] [3], OpenSearch [4]), harvesting and syndication (OAI-OMH [5], ATOM [6]), copying (unAPI [7] [8]), publishing, editing (AtomPub [9], Jangle [10], SRU Update [11]), and more basic library operations, either already exist or are being developed.

The creation of the SeeAlso linkserver protocol was occasioned by the need to enrich title views in library catalogues of the German Common Library Network (GBV) with links to additional information. However, instead of integrating those links into title records and tailoring the presentation to our specific OPAC software, we decided to create a general linkserver Web service.

WorldCat Search API

Nice for members of OCLC, WorldCat Search API (Web service).

The WorldCat Search API allows your application to search the WorldCat catalog—which indexes the collections of thousands of member libraries around the world—and retrieve:

• lists of bibliographic records, and individual records, for library-held items;
• information about WorldCat libraries that have cataloged a particular item; and
• direct links to those libraries' Web catalog records for the item, when available

Your application will allow users to discover books, videos, music, electronic content and more through WorldCat.

How the API works

• Send searches in OpenSearch or SRU CQL syntax
• Receive OpenSearch responses in RSS or Atom format
• Receive SRU responses in MARC XML or Dublin Core
• Receive MARC XML content for a single OCLC record
• Receive geographically-sorted library holdings information (each including the institution's name, location and a catalog link) within requests for single records
• Receive records in standard bibliographic citation formats (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian)

Who can use this tool.

LibraryThing API

News from LibraryThing.

LibraryThing just released a free, CC-attribution-licensed Web Services XML API to our "Common Knowledge" system, including series data, fictional characters, author dates and much else. I'm particularly stoked about the series data. I think it's of exceptional quality, suitable for use in OPACs (eg., Star+Wars). Anyway, in a catalog or not, there are a lot of cool things to do with it.

IESR

A Registry of collections and their services : from metadata to implementation by Ann Apps appears in the Proceedings The International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications (DC2004), pp. 67-73, Shanghai (China).

The JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR) is a machine-to-machine middleware shared service providing a single central catalogue of quality descriptions of collections of resources available to researchers, learners and teachers in the UK, along with details of the services that provide access to those collections. The collections and services are described according to a set of metadata, which is defined by IESR, but is based on open standards wherever possible. The prototype registry is implemented as an XML repository indexed with the Cheshire II information retrieval software, with an associated meta-registry to support browsing and data capture. Several interfaces for server-to-server retrieval of IESR XML descriptions are available, as well as a Web interface.

Some other related papers by Ann Apps include:

• zetoc SOAP: a Web Services Interface for a Digital Library Resource
• The JISC information environment service registry: providing a catalogue of resources for portals

European APIs

The JISC Information Environment Service Registry (IESR):

• is a machine readable registry of electronic resources;
• contains information about these electronic resources, and details of how to access them;
• aims to make it easier for other applications to discover and use materials which will help their users' learning, teaching and research.

LibraryThing API

Tim Spalding has released an API for LibraryThing.

I just released a Javascript/JSON API to LibraryThing core work data.

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/03/first-cut-works-json-api.php

It's basically a riff on what Google did recently—a way to link to LibraryThing if we have a book, and not if we don't. It also includes copy and review counts, and the average rating. It takes ISBNs, LCCNs and OCLC numbers.

Next up will be a JSON API into member books, so members can design their own widgets and mash their library up with the contents of a page.

It's all very beta, and my ears are wide open.

AIPs and Mashups

APIs and Mashups For The Rest Of Us by Gareth Rushgrove appears in the latest Digital Web Magazine.

This article, the first in a series of two, aims to lift the lid on all things API; the second article will give you some hands-on tools and tips to get you started. For now, it’s all about how we managed to get here--and where here actually is.

Why should we even care about this? Well, with an API our users could create mash-ups of our OPACs making them more useful and user-friendly.

APIFinder

APIFinder is a growing index of various application programming interfaces (APIs). An API provides a set of instructions that you can use to make new software interoperate with existing applications. This site is also a place to share ideas and advice on how to use APIs in your programming. This site grows in part through community contribution so please submit your favorite APIs as well as articles and API-related projects today!

I didn't find unAPI in their collection. I did spot ISBNdb, a tool for using an ISBN database.

API

Noncommercial APIs

The ProgrammableWeb points to a post by Dan Cohen over at George Mason University that looked that the APIs listed and asked a good question: Where Are the Noncommercial APIs?. If you know of any get them listed there. Maybe the unAPI will help more noncommercial, and smaller institutions get into the game.

unAPI