jwestgard
commented
11 years ago Steve,
I think you could pretty easily write a python script to loop through a list of ISBNs and query LOC's catalog API for each one. Then, you could use the 're' (regular expressions) python module to parse the resulting records and locate a particular field or string.
The question is, is there a single field that you could expect to find in each record that would be useful for sorting the journals in question? Subject fields are the sort of thing you're looking for, I think, but the question is how do you deal with results that return multiple subject fields for a given record? Maybe some MARC specialists could point us in the right direction. Is there a single field we could look for in the records retrievable from LOC's catalog that would allow us to sort journals into meaningful sub-categories?
Here's more about LOC's API: http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/
A sample query is: http://z3950.loc.gov:7090/voyager?version=1.1&operation=searchRetrieve&query=0596002815&maximumRecords=1&recordSchema=dc
The bit after "&query=" is where you could put in the ISBN/ISSN. This query asks for one result only, and that the result be Dublin Core metadata. I put in the ISBN for Mark Lutz's Learning Python book.
I have a bit of Python that you can use to query a website. It requires a module called url, but it is pretty easy to work with. I will post it on Github and put a link here.
Josh
lseguin
spurioso
This is something that came up in a meeting of UMD selectors and collection management people last week.
The Libraries will be doing a survey with faculty to determine how important our serials subscriptions are.
Faculty will be asked to look at a list of our subscriptions and rank them in some way (i.e., Can NEVER cancel, could do without, etc.).
We'll be using some kind of tool developed by NC State for this. I can add the link when I find it.
The lists of subscriptions will be sorted by fund code only. So, all the music journals will be listed on one spreadsheet. This includes academic musicology journals, trade magazines for instrumentalists, music education journals, and so on.
At the meeting, some selectors expressed a desire to further subdivide the lists. So, for me, maybe I would want to separate out the music education journals from the music theory journals, since a music theorist might not be interested at all in music education. The situation is maybe even more acute for something like English literature that has several hundred subscriptions.
So, I'm wondering if there's a way to take the list of ISSNs that will be in the spreadsheet, feed them through something and have the something spit back out useful subject categories. I know this is possible with Aleph or Worldcat. I'm also wondering if Ulrich's offers a Web service that might do something similar, maybe with simpler subcategories. Maybe some other options out there too.