Add book data from WorldCat OCLC to Manual Entry form
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1Keeline
Some of the books I try to enter are moderately obscure. One example of this is The Racer Boys Forging Ahead; or, The Rivals of the School League (NY: Cupples & Leon, 1914) by "Clarence Young" (Howard R. Garis for the Stratemeyer Syndicate).
These days the Library of Congress catalog searches are becoming less and less reliable. I use it as my primary data source but it is simply not working many times when I want to use it. In this case, it is not in the LoC catalog.
I tried OverCat and many of the other U.S. based data sources and failed to find it. It has not yet been cataloged by any LT members.
I did find it in WorldCat, the web portal to the OCLC database.
I know that Tim finds OCLC to be an unfriendly rival so I don't expect any help in adding WorldCat as a data source even if the right kind of interface was available. However, I wonder if some kind of screen scraping of the OCLC could be done with a TamperMonkey (Chrome) or GreaseMonkey script.
The idea would be to collect what data is available and paste it into a blank Manual Entry form on LT. This is somewhat similar to the LT Copy Book script procedure so far as getting the data into LT.
Perhaps screen scraping is not the easiest way to go. WorldCat has some export features. One of them is found for EndNote with this URL: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30982787?page=endnotealt&client=worldcat.org-d... and the data looks like this which seems parsable and well organized:
For this export, WorldCat offers to download a text file with a name like: WorldCat_30982787.ris
I do programming for PHP and Bash but find the GreaseMonkey/TamperMonkey approach to be a little hard to absorb. Would anyone with more experience care to tackle this interesting project?
James
These days the Library of Congress catalog searches are becoming less and less reliable. I use it as my primary data source but it is simply not working many times when I want to use it. In this case, it is not in the LoC catalog.
I tried OverCat and many of the other U.S. based data sources and failed to find it. It has not yet been cataloged by any LT members.
I did find it in WorldCat, the web portal to the OCLC database.
I know that Tim finds OCLC to be an unfriendly rival so I don't expect any help in adding WorldCat as a data source even if the right kind of interface was available. However, I wonder if some kind of screen scraping of the OCLC could be done with a TamperMonkey (Chrome) or GreaseMonkey script.
The idea would be to collect what data is available and paste it into a blank Manual Entry form on LT. This is somewhat similar to the LT Copy Book script procedure so far as getting the data into LT.
Perhaps screen scraping is not the easiest way to go. WorldCat has some export features. One of them is found for EndNote with this URL: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30982787?page=endnotealt&client=worldcat.org-d... and the data looks like this which seems parsable and well organized:
TY - BOOK
DB - /z-wcorg/
DP - http://worldcat.org
ID - 30982787
LA - English
T1 - The Racer boys forging ahead, or, The rivals of the school league
A1 - Young, Clarence., Rogers, Walter S.,,
PB - Cupples & Leon
CY - New York
Y1 - 1914///
ER -
For this export, WorldCat offers to download a text file with a name like: WorldCat_30982787.ris
I do programming for PHP and Bash but find the GreaseMonkey/TamperMonkey approach to be a little hard to absorb. Would anyone with more experience care to tackle this interesting project?
James
2lorax
It's not so much Tim's perception as the OCLC's policies. Tracking back references from previous times people suggested using Worldcat as a source turned this up:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/7908#77941
https://www.librarything.com/topic/7908#77941
3lesmel
This isn't solving what you want; but it's some alternatives:
OCLC says three libraries have that title:
University of South Florida -- working source at LT
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities -- working source at LT
New York Public Library System -- locked their access down to libraries in the state only
Terry Reese has an RIS to MARC plugin on github: https://github.com/reeset/ris_to_marc. I'm assuming that is used in MARCEdit.
Various reference management apps have an export to XML format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software#Export...
OCLC says three libraries have that title:
University of South Florida -- working source at LT
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities -- working source at LT
New York Public Library System -- locked their access down to libraries in the state only
Terry Reese has an RIS to MARC plugin on github: https://github.com/reeset/ris_to_marc. I'm assuming that is used in MARCEdit.
Various reference management apps have an export to XML format. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software#Export...
4Keeline
What I might try to do is use that export, paste it into a web form processed by PHP and try to get that script to post to the same target used by the manual entry form. There might be a login issue depending on where I run the PHP. It will probably have to be on the local machine but I'm not sure that the login will be respected. A Javascript implementation is more likely to work on this count.
On this particular book, I copy-pasted from the export to a manual entry form so that one is done. The reason those three particular libraries have this volume is that they are noted for having collections of juvenile series books of this type. However, I have not found that any of them are presently data sources for LT. Perhaps one of them has a suitable interface. I shall look into that as I have time.
James
On this particular book, I copy-pasted from the export to a manual entry form so that one is done. The reason those three particular libraries have this volume is that they are noted for having collections of juvenile series books of this type. However, I have not found that any of them are presently data sources for LT. Perhaps one of them has a suitable interface. I shall look into that as I have time.
James
