‡biblios.net is a free and open shared cataloging service that contains over 30 million MARC records available for use and sharing under an open license. It provides a web-based metadata editor as well as ‡biblios.net Web Services (BWS), which are APIs that allow users to search, retrieve, create, and update bibliographic records programmatically. BWS supports searching via Z39.50, SRU, RSS, Atom, and harvesting via OAI-PMH, and includes a RESTful API for full CRUD access to MARC records. The goal is to make the cataloging data widely available and useful through various technical access methods.

1. ‡biblios.net Web
Services
Galen Charlton
VP, Research and Development, LibLime

2. What is ‡biblios.net
‡biblios.net is a free and open shared cataloging service.
Web-based
Uses the open source ‡biblios metadata editor
https://www.biblios.net/

3. Metadata for all people
The ‡biblios.net database contains over 30 million MARC
records and growing.
All records in ‡biblios.net are available for use and sharing
under the PDDL – the Open Data Commons Public Domain
Dedication and License.
Croudsourcing cataloging

4. Metadata for all computers
The ‡biblios metadata editor is pretty nifty.
But it’s not the only way to retrieve the MARC records.
In fact, it’s not the only way to add and change the MARC
records.
Enter BWS: ‡biblios.net Web Services

5. BWS
BWS is a set of application programming interfaces
Using BWS, you can write programs to
search ‡biblios.net
retrieve bib records one at time
retrieve lots of bib records
create and update bib records

6. Finding records
Lots of ways – most of which are actually web services
Z39.50
SRU
OpenSearch, RSS and Atom

7. Z39.50
Not actually a web service, but our favorite library searching
standard.
z3950.biblios.net:210/bibliographic
z3950.biblios.net:210/authority
Connection: David Schuster’s MarcEdit presentation

8. SRU
Actually a web service
http://sru.biblios.net/bibliographic
Can get results in MARCXML, Dublin Core, and MODS
http://sru.biblios.net/bibliographic?
version=1.1&operation=searchRetrieve&query=perl&startRec
ord=1&maximumRecords=20&recordSchema=marcxml

9. RSS and Atom
Feed the feed reader!
http://bws.biblios.net/opensearch?
q=perl&pw=1&format=rss2
http://bws.biblios.net/opensearch?
q=perl&pw=1&format=atom

10. RSS - Yahoo Pipes
http://pipes.yahoo.com/

11. Harvesting
OAI-PMH - Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata
Harvesting
http://www.openarchives.org/pmh/

12. BWS and OAI-PMH
Get records updated by date range
Returns Dublin Core
Base URL: https://bws.biblios.net/oai

13. Now to the fun stuff
BWS includes a RESTful API for retrieving, adding, and
updating MARC bib records
With this, anybody with an account on ‡biblios.net can write
code to access the records.

14. APIs
https://bws.biblios.net/authentication
https://bws.biblios.net/bib_profile
https://bws.biblios.net/bib/<id>
https://bws.biblios.net/new_bib

15. What’s next?
http://bws.biblios.net/
Mashups galore
The data is out there - make the most of it

16. Thanks
Galen Charlton
galen.charlton@liblime.com
LibLime