Library of Congress searches

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dagopher
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Library of Congress searches

Post by dagopher »

Am I doing something wrong when trying to pull data from the Library of Congress? I have LOC catalogue card no. 55-5634. But when I put that, or any similar LOC card number into the search box, I never get any results from the LOC through Bookpedia. I event tried to entry the data as the 8 digit version, 55005634, (per LOC instructions for their own search) and still couldn't find anything through Bookpedia. Am I entering the wrong data or the incorrect data?

Here's the relevant page from the LOC website for my book: http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebreco ... 100&HIST=1

It would be wonderful to get this working as I keep finding tons of pre-80's books which don't have (I)SBNs but do have LOC numbers.

thx
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Conor
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Re: Library of Congress searches

Post by Conor »

They changed their API making results stricter. I have updated Bookpedia to have a limit "None" option for the Library of Congress search that will leave it up to the Library of Congress to determine the search type. Please download Bookpedia beta and you will then be able to search for "55005634" (no hyphen as this is what the LOC recommends). This should give you the "Handbook of applied mathematics".

The new limit is to explicitly tell the the LOC what to search for, the plugin will look at the number and set the limit accordingly depending on the length. The one ambiguous number search type (starting from 2000 onwards the LLCN year is 4 digits, which makes the LCCN 10 digit number indistinguishable from an old ISBN) I leave up to the server to figure out by setting None as the limit instead of ISBN or LCCN specifically.
dagopher
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Re: Library of Congress searches

Post by dagopher »

I've tested the beta and it does appear to work as described. Thank you.

I admit I have never looked at the various forms of the LOC's catalog numbers, and I can't imagine I'm alone in this. Seeing how LOC is a really good place for pre-(I)SBN books (at least in the US) I'm betting a lot of people are confused when an LOC number like '55-5634' doesn't return anything. I admit to being confused by this for a while now. If possible, I would like to see where Bookpedia take such a search and would try it raw, and if no results are found, re-submit the search replacing the hyphen with the needed number of zeros. Or maybe just make a note of this in the docs.

Regardless, I appreciate the update. So far so good.

thx.
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Conor
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Re: Library of Congress searches

Post by Conor »

Bookpedia is quite smart about ISBN as they are more computer friendly. Bookpedia can tell that a number is actually an ISBN as amend the search as required, the variability of the LCCN has been an issue for a long time, and the LOC has been trying to correct it for quite sometime. Especially now that computer systems are so prevalent and the need arises to recognize the LCCN number automatically. Hopefully the LOC would update their search engine to recognize the dashed form. In the meantime I built some logic into the LOC search on the Bookpedia side to try to identify the dashed form of the LCCN (new beta)
dagopher
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Re: Library of Congress searches

Post by dagopher »

Lateste beta tested again and it works.

My only recommendation at this point is I had to move LOC up in the search order before AbeBooks as they keep matching on the weirdest stuff with strings like '55-5634'. That's not a complaint, that's just an observation.

thx
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