thingISBN, LibraryThing's first API

Over on LibraryThing's Thingology blog, I blog the unveiling of thingISBN, LibraryThing's first API. thingISBN is LibraryThing's "answer" to OCLC's xISBN—give it an ISBN and it will give you ISBNs to other editions of the work. Where xISBN uses FRBR, LibraryThing uses the "everyone is a librarian" works system. thingISBN isn't going to replace xISBN, which is an extraordinary service, but it can supplement it in interesting ways. For starters, it knows a lot of paperbacks xISBN doesn't.

This is red meat for mashups and of interest to catalogers and library systems programmers. But most "regular" LibraryThing users won't care much, so I won't drone on about it here.