A weblog following developments around the world in FRBR: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records.

Maintained by William Denton, Web Librarian at York University. Suggestions and comments welcome at wtd@pobox.com.


Confused? Try What Is FRBR? (2.8 MB PDF) by Barbara Tillett, or Jenn Riley's introduction. For more, see the basic reading list.

Books: FRBR: A Guide for the Perplexed by Robert Maxwell (ISBN 9780838909508) and Understanding FRBR: What It Is and How It Will Affect Our Retrieval Tools edited by Arlene Taylor (ISBN 9781591585091) (read my chapter FRBR and the History of Cataloging).

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All thingISBN data available in one huge file

Posted by: William Denton, 16 March 2007 7:45 am
Categories: LibraryThing

LibraryThing has done something very useful and generous. As you know, Bob, their thingISBN service is akin to OCLC’s xISBN: give it the ISBN of a book and it will return a list of ISBNs of other editions of the same book. In FRBR terms, we say: give it the ISBN of a manifestation and it will give you a list of ISBNs of manifestations of the same work.

Tim Spalding says in thingISBN Data in One File:

APIs, while nifty, can be a pain. Both thingISBN and xISBN have a 1,000-per-day limit. So, starting today, thingISBN is also available in feed format—one giant XML file with all the data from over two million unique ISBNs.

He doesn’t give a direct link to the full file, probably because it’s 16 MB in size and search engine crawlers would go at it relentlessly, but all you have to do is look for where he gives the URL in plain text. He even gives some sample SQL to help get the stuff into a database. Download it, fool around with it, find new uses for it! Good for LibraryThing.