I’ve added a small, but nifty new API that provides a sure-fire way of connecting any site’s book data to LibraryThing.
The “What work?” API takes an ISBN and/or the book title and author and returns the LibraryThing work number, with link URL in XML.
It’s a very forgiving algorithm—these all lead to my wife’s The Mermaids Singing.
- http://www.librarything.com/api/whatwork.php?isbn=0380815591
- http://www.librarything.com/api/whatwork.php?title=The+Mermaids+Singing&author=Carey,+Lisa
- http://www.librarything.com/api/whatwork.php?title=The+Mermaids+Singing+/+by+Lisa+Carey
- http://www.librarything.com/api/whatwork.php?title=merenneitojen+laulu&author=carey,+lisa
In sum, if you can’t connect your data to LibraryThing now, you aren’t trying!
If there’s interest, I can add a JSON version.
*You need to provide either an ISBN (ISBN10 or 13; with dashes or not) or a title and author. Authors can be in last-first (preferred) or first-last (fine). You can omit the author and tack it onto the title, eg., “Huckleberry Finn / Twain, Mark.” It’s very forgiving about punctuation, capitalization and so forth. It doesn’t make wild guesses, but it makes sensible ones.
Labels: apis, new features
0 Comments: