Twelve (was ten) more libraries
I added ten eleven twelve new searchable libraries, bringing LibraryThing up to 47 libraries, plus the Amazons.
I was thinking of having a LibraryThing meetup at their weekly tea, to which members can invite non-members. Wouldn't that be fun?
- MIT and Caltech. Technical and scientific heft.
- NIH / National Library of Medicine. Medical heft.
- National Art Library (UK). Art heft.
- NEBIS (Switzerland). Swiss catalog gathers holdings of some 60 member libraries, with material in German, Italian, French and—one imagines—Romansch.
- Bahria University, Pakistan. LibraryThing's first Pakistani library.
- National Library of Poland. First Polish library. Some character problems. Poles are invited to tell me about them.
- Stockholm University. More Swedish books.
- Tufts University. It's not my fault that Boston has so many open library-data servers.
- Boston Athenaeum. By popular request, I added one of my favorite libraries, Boston's extraordinary private—yes, private—library, just steps from the State House.
- UPDATE: ILSCO. I've added ILCSO, the Illinois Libary Computer Systems Organization, a consortium of some 65 libraries, holding 32 million records. The libraries include Wheaton, DePaul, Illinois State, the University of Illinois, The Catholic Theological Union, and The Newberry Library, another great private library. ILSCO is also pretty fast, which helps.
- UPDATE: CISTI. Someone who works at the Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (CISTI) suggested I add them—apparently they are "Canada's National Science Lbrary"—and pointed me to connection info. Thanks! Others should feel free to do the same; the trick is: I need a z39.50 connection (I'll consider SRU). Pointing me to the web catalog does no good.
I was thinking of having a LibraryThing meetup at their weekly tea, to which members can invite non-members. Wouldn't that be fun?
posted by Tim at 12:31 AM
29 Comments:
Thanks! How many libraries does that make?
Would it be possible, as in technically feasible, to add French French libraries? I often have no luck with the Belgian/Canadian libraries that are on the list.
If you could add the SUDOC and/or CCFR, that would be a real help :)
I'd like to see a Hebrew library in there, if only because I have two books in Hebrew that I couldn't input myself since I don't speak the language.
Additionally, I wonder if you can include the NYPL, for several reasons:
1) I'm from NYC, so there's some city pride in there.
2) It's one of the largest library collections in the US.
3) It's one of the larger research bases for comic book related materials, or at least that's what comes up on Google.
Typo: On the list of libraries being wested in University College Gallway. Should be Galway, no?
Thank you so much for adding our NEBIS libraries! I was going to suggest that, but you were quicker. As we have pretty much everything somewhere in Switzerland that means less manual entries for me.
Also, national pride plays a role here (like NYPL does for lampbane). It's nice that my library and therefore my everyday work is part of librarything too.
Your header should have been "90+ more libraries" since there are more than 80 academic libraries in NEBIS.
Again, thank you Tim!
Thalia
Oh, lovely, lovely, looooveely!
The Athenaeum is one of those rare libraries that still uses the original "Cutter" classification
The Newberry Library here in Chicago uses a modified form of the Cutter system. Here's an interesting exchange of letters between Mr. Cutter and a Newberry cataloguer on the subject.
Great news! I can surely use the Tufts catalog for my old Greek books.
I take the opportunity to repeat, for the fifth time at least, my request to try and add a Hebrew library, preferably the United Libraries of Israel catalog, to whose gateway I've pointed in several earlier posts.
If you're on it and it would take time (understandably, as the Hebrew would most probably require some clever iconv'ing), just let me know you're on it. If you need technical or lingual help, I can give it.
asaf -at- forum2.org
LT username: ijon
I'm sure you've already seen it, but the LoC has a big list of Z39.50 catalogs: http://www.loc.gov/z3950/
I'd have recommended adding the MnSCU/PALS libraries, but the home page is rather unforthcoming with Z39.50 information. (The entire state university system in Minnesota is connected to it, including all the community colleges.)
Does anyone happen to know if any of the major genealogical libraries, like NEHGS or the LDS Family History Library, are accessible via Z39.50? I looked at their websites and the LC list above and they don't seem to be there. Either of these might be good for this class of small-press specialty literature.
RJO
Thanks for the explanations, Tim! Here are the z39.50 connection specifications for the collective catalog. If you could add it, it would be absolutely awesome, as it uses the catalogs of the French National Library, all the universities' libraries, and most major city libraries.
Here's a UK list http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distributed-systems/zdir/ just in case you wanted a few more . . .
Bob
Would it be possible to add an Italian Library?
The national catalogue (SBN) is on http://www.internetculturale.it/moduli/opac/opac.jsp. The National Library of Florence is on http://catalogo.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/cgi-opac/opac.cgi?Lingua=ITA&unicode=F
Dear Tim,
I have a suggestion. I'd like to see a software mechanism whereby I could make the books in my catalogue which were published before 1800 show up and none others.
"Fun statistics" has informed me that I own 54 books published before 1800, and 172 books published between 1800 and 1899.
Who knew? I have no idea which books these are except as I may remember this or that older book I cherish.
Could you fix the search mechanism for our library catalogues so that when I type in say a date all the books published before that date turn up and none others? I'd love to know and to see what precisely are all my older books as a group and go through them.
It would be useful if I were to try to get insurance for my library to know the titles and names of these books as I could then describe the state. I have some you see through xeroxes (that is, e.g., I have a xerox of the contemporary very early 19th century French translation of a novel by Charlotte Smith), some through 19th century reprints of older books, and some genuine older books.
I'd like to see what I have to assess it as well as sheer curiosity.
Since you have made these "fun statistics" it would be good for library owners to be able to make effective and personally satisfying use of such numbers or information.
Chava
Cool about the Newberry Library ... I live just a couple of blocks from them!
What, exactly, does having all these various libraris "do for us" on LibraryThing? Is it just a way to get data on very old or obscure books?
- BTRIPP
Dunno why I haven't thought to suggest the Summit catalog. It's for all public (and some private) higher education institutions in Oregon and all four-year public higher education institutions in Washington. I've used it for cataloging books that aren't in the LoC.
Chava, if you are looking at the non-graphical/text version of your books and you're using one of the views that includes "date", you can click on date to sort by date. Then just head to the end of your list with all of the older books. Hope that helps.
-PG
Actually, Jonathan, LibraryThing has been purchased by Daewoo.
I'm working on getting the BFN (National Library "de" France) working. It's *almost* there. That'll be a BIG one.
Thank you for adding Polish National Library. I am changing non-Latin letters manually for right now, the same with many French.
Wait!
(1) I'd love to work with you to get the Polish working. For example, send me a title, then what the letters SHOULD be. It shouldn't be too hard to get them working.
(2) Which French ones? BNF? Another one? This should work, and I'll work the issue if you can let me know which are getting wrong.
Tim
Okay Jonathan, fine, no NYPL for us. But I notice that NYU has a Z39.50 catalog, and that includes the libraries of the Consortium ( New School for Social Research, Parsons School of Design, Mannes College of Music, and Cooper Union) in addition to Bobst and Courant.
Bueller?
Tim, I emailed you samples of Polish letter. Will be happy to help.
Yes, thank you. I need to spend some time assimilating the two emails I got about Polish—yours goes into detail.
I'm a little pressed right now. Okay, I'm crushed under a wagon wheel, basically.
Dear Anonymous,
I don't know what you mean by "the non-graphical/text version of your books." The only date I see on my catalogue is entry date. That is the date I entered the book into the catalogue. That will not help me identify the books I own that were published before 1800 and the books published between 1800 and 1899.
I don't know why the search engines of each individual's library is not a priority issue.
Chava
Chava -
Which display style are you using? There are some that display the publication date. That is the field labeled "date", as opposed to the field labeled "entry date" which is the date you entered the book in your catalogue.
Hope this clears things up!
Have you considered COPAC Tim?
http://copac.ac.uk/
I quote from the web site
"Copac is a union catalogue, giving FREE access to the merged online catalogues of members of the Consortium of Research Libraries (CURL). There are over 31 million records on Copac representing the merged holdings of 27 CURL member institutions."
There is some overlap with the UK based libraries you already have implemented but if you look at http://copac.ac.uk/ you can see that it would offer far more than you already have.
It does have a Z39.50 interface so should be OK to use.
COPAC is already in the 'Testing' libraries at the bottom of the frame :)
(as is BNF which I suggested the other day without noticing it being there)
Right. Testing generally means I haven't gotten it to work yet...
Once the Polish libraries are working how you want them, any chance of a Russian one? Although, truthfully, I have yet to find an online Russian library database that is comprehensive enough to be useful. I've gotten in the habit of just googling my Russian ISBNs and then copying and pasting the Russian titles over since it's too much of a pain to type in Cyrillic on this keyboard.
This is way too fun of a site to play with as it is, though, so maybe I'd be safer not making any suggestions. :)
For now, I've been putting the authors' names in English in the main author section, and then in Cyrillic characters under 'other authors'. I originally had the authors' names only in Cyrillic, and then realized that kept the books from automatically being grouped with others by those authors.
A great Z39:50 site to include would be Libraries Australia - the union catalogue which lists holdings for almost all Australian libraries.
Their coding info is at: http://www.nla.gov.au/librariesaustralia/manuals/laz3950.html
Kaffles.
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