669 Data Sources!
In our continued quest to give our members the best data possible, we've added 417 new cataloging sources from around the world to LibraryThing.
It's a lot to take in at once. We've added or greatly increased our support in a number of areas; here are some of the highlights:
That's a pretty good mix, but the vast majority we added were US or Canadian libraries, even though we already had plenty of both. We're still pretty weak in some areas, and completely missing in others. We use a protocol called Z39.50 to get book data from libraries. Quite simply, these are all the Z39.50 servers we could find info for and could get working with our software. We'd love to have thousands more, from all corners of the globe. Any library that has a Z39.50 server that would like to be on LibraryThing just needs to send me their connection info and I will add them.
All of these have been tested fairly thoroughly, but I'm sure there will be problems with some of them. Z39.50 is fickle and complex, and the servers are often unreliable. So some problems may be caused by misconfiguration on our part, and some may be due to circumstances and servers we can't control. Let us know when there are problems, and we'll do what we can.
It's a lot to take in at once. We've added or greatly increased our support in a number of areas; here are some of the highlights:
- Chinese: Academica Sinica, Feng Chia University, Lingnan Uniersity, National Cheng-chi University Libraries, Zhejiang Provincial Library
- Russian: Moskow Library Network, Russian State Library
- Czech: NK Praha, VK Olomouc, Moravian Library in Brno, Mìstská knihovna Prostìjov
- Thai: Srinakharinwirot University
- Arabic: United Arab Emirates University, American University of Cairo, International Islamic University Malaysia
- Portuguese: Sistema Integrado de Bibliotecas da Universidade de Lisboa, Biblioteca Municipal Manuel Teixeira Gomes, Biblioteca Municipal de Ponte de Lima
- Lithuanian: National Library of Lithuania, Lithuanian Union Catalogue
- Polish: National Library of Poland
- Estonian: Estonian Union Catalog, Tartu University Library
- German: Südwestdeutscer Bibliotheksverbund, Juristisches Seminar der Universität Tübingen, Universität Basel
- Seminaries: Asbury College and Theological Seminary, Wheeling Jesuit University, Eastern Cluster of Lutheran Seminaries, Princeton Theological Seminary
- Military libraries: United States Military Academy, United States Navel Academy
- Colleges: Middlebury, Wellesley, Dartmouth, Carleton, Bard
- Museums/Special collections: Smithsonian Institution Research Information System, Folger Shakespeare Library, Museum of Modern Art
- Consortia/Union Catalogs: New England Library Consortium, SELCO, Merrimack Valley Library Consortium, LIBROS Consortium, MARMOT Consortium
- Universities: McGill, Princeton, Georgetown, Duke, Rutgers, Ohio State, Colorado
- Large public libraries: New York, San Francisco, Denver, D.C., Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis
- State Libraries: New York State Library, State Library of Florida, State Library of Pennsylvania, Texas State Library
That's a pretty good mix, but the vast majority we added were US or Canadian libraries, even though we already had plenty of both. We're still pretty weak in some areas, and completely missing in others. We use a protocol called Z39.50 to get book data from libraries. Quite simply, these are all the Z39.50 servers we could find info for and could get working with our software. We'd love to have thousands more, from all corners of the globe. Any library that has a Z39.50 server that would like to be on LibraryThing just needs to send me their connection info and I will add them.
All of these have been tested fairly thoroughly, but I'm sure there will be problems with some of them. Z39.50 is fickle and complex, and the servers are often unreliable. So some problems may be caused by misconfiguration on our part, and some may be due to circumstances and servers we can't control. Let us know when there are problems, and we'll do what we can.
Labels: milestones, new libraries, z39.50
posted by Casey Durfee at 12:47 AM
21 Comments:
Guys, you're the BEST!
I'm gonna advertise you in my Russian blog and make all my friend join :)))
Thanks!!!
Hello, something you might have overlooked - it still says "252 other sources" on the add books page. Great job btw!
heyy i think the children's books are pretty exhaustive.
I'd highly recommend the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis as a great read. The author's imagination and creativity never cease to amaze me. Although most might think that they are for children.,I think most adults would also enjoy reading them. In fact, Disney is coming up with the latest Narnia movie-Prince Caspian, this May 16th. It promises to be awesome by the looks of the trailor. I think its very well-timed also, especially for the kids who'd be on summer break. So dont miss it!
And also - possible mispelling for Academica Sinica (extra 'c') -- I think the correct name is the Academia Sinica.
I wish it was easier to add books not for sale anywhere and not in catalogs (those Time Life cookbooks our grandmother left us come to mind) that other people have *already entered by hand* to our library.
It's very frustrating to find a book on LT that I have, click to add the book-- and be dumped back to the library/amazon search which doesn't match the book!
I haven't found a way around this yet. If someone else has typed it in already, why do I have to do it again???
I was so sure that this would be an April 1 joke... But just to be sure I checked it anyway and am glad I did :-)))
"The U.S. Navel Academy" [sic]
Courses in gazing and oranges.
Clearly I was not hired for my spelling skills... thanks, the mistakes have been corrected.
No matter how many times I read this blog post, I still can't see the part where I'm supposed to start laughing.
You might want to stick Basel back in Switzerland...they can be touchy about that.
is this a joke? =]
(sorry ... you can understand my skepticism based on the date of the announcement)
I know Basel is in Switzerland, but it's a good source of German language data (actual libraries in Germany that we can connect to have been very hard to find). It's German as in language, not as in country. Same for Chinese.
While we're at it, last time I checked it was Südwestdeutscher Bibliotheksverbund.
Still no Romanian sources? That is very disappointing.
Yes, I wish we had Romanian sources, too. I looked for them and couldn't find any. CIMEC or Biblioteca Nationala a României may have Z39.50 servers that we could use, but I couldn't find any info on them on the web.
In terms of Z39.50 sources, you should try Australia's CSIRO - one of the world's premier research and development organization. They were one of the very early developers and users of Z39.50 standard, and I suggest that you contact them re accessing their catalog. See http://voyager.its.csiro.au/. Their library is quite comprehensive.
CSIRO also provides links with a number of other Z39.50 compliant libraries in Australia and around the world that would help fill the gap for technology books. See http://voyager.its.csiro.au/remote.htm. Some of these would be new to LibraryThing.
How could I submit some romanian libraries to LibraryThing? (OPAC catalogues, etc.)
Eg: http://ibm.bcut.ro/F (this is the university library from Timisoara, Romania)
Yayyy! Love all the new access!! Please also add the Culinary Institute of America's Conrad N. Hilton Library site. Thanks!
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I'd be interested in seeing your list of z39.50 targets, to see if you know about any that I don't. I don't have a database of them yet, but the EndNote software comes with over 3,000 pre-configured z39.50 connection files--until I do have a list of them to put online, the only way you could see them, I suppose, is to download a demo of EndNote, then look in the connection manager. Two other good sources are IRSPy and Kronosdoc.
@sue ann: I added Culinary Institute of America.
@billhall: CSIRO was on our list and stopped working. I'll see what's up with that.
@horsdumonde: you can see the list of sources we've got on the LibraryThing add books page. I'm sure we've got some unique ones since some are libraries that didn't even know they were running Z39.50 and a some (like the British Library and several LibraryThing for Libraries customers) are exclusive deals.
I'll check out Endnote and Kronosdoc, but the problem with IRSpy (and similar lists on the web) is most of their sources are broken and the information is incomplete -- I screen-scraped IRSpy's and only took the working ones, bit still took a lot of manual tweaking to correct wrong or unspecified settings. (MARCThing, our Z39.50 package, now auto-detects character and MARC encodings, which minimizes the tweaking required.)
But obviously, the right thing to do is to crowdsource this; the sooner I can get out of the fiddling-with-Z39.50 business, the better. We're releasing the code for MARCThing on Monday and medium to long-term we'll make it possible to have members add sources.
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