Book sources

From WikiThing

When adding and importing books via the Add books page you can search for books in different external databases. You can enter a title, author or an ISBN in the green search box and books will appear on the right side of the screen. You can select the databases that are used as source for book information by selecting from the Search what? list below the green search box. LibraryThing provides a growing number of book sources that can be searched in.

[edit] How are book sources included in LibraryThing?

For databases to be accessed by LT, they need to allow access via the Z39.50 protocol or its successor, the SRU/SRW protocol.

If you have a new data source to suggest, add it to the New book sources page.

[edit] How can I make my database accessible to LT?

If your database supports Z39.50 or SRU then it's probably easy (depending on the metadata schema you support). If your database does not provide a search API or uses a standard of its own then you may think about providing access via SRU. This will not only enable LT to search in your database but also other users! Your database will be easier to integrate into Mashups so you won't be sitting alone at your island of data anymore.

The article Implementing SRU in Perl by library hacker Eric Lease Morgan might give you a starting point. You can use the SRU-Modules at CPAN or other existing code.

Your implementation should at least support a simple search via one single ("any") field index. The index should include book-related data such as ISBN (!), author names, titles etc. The result should include as many of the fields of LibraryThing book records (ISBN, Title, Author, DDC, ...).

Open questions:

• What is the prefered recordSchema for the SRU response? Is there an XML schema for LibraryThing records or can you use a standard library format like MARCXML or MODS?

[edit] How can I use LibraryThing as a book source

LT probably also provides an API that you can use in other applications.