search via LCCCN

[eleybourn]

can you add Library of Congress Catilogue Card Numbers (LCCCN) to the search perameters? People who collect historical books would probably appreciate this.

Via email from karen

[eleybourn]

LCCCN lookup can be found here: http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/

[eleybourn]

<snip - via email>

I think the only trouble with including LCCN is the ordering. It is not strictly alpha-numeric and appears that the ordering is somewhat "decimalized" so that anything following a "." is treated like a decimal. As an example, the following order is correct:

EV102.Z87
Q20.7.K15
QB304.P630
QB304.P75
QC122.G390
QC122.5.A345
QC122.5.H2

(I'm a science geek, so I know the "Q" section better than most others---but don't quiz me on the actual subject-to-LCCN conversions)

The first portion of the call number is one-to-three letters denoting the subject and arranged alphabetically.

The second portion of the call number is a decimal number (so QC122 precedes QC122.5) and is a sub-division of the alphabetical subject code.

The third portion of the call number is the author code---as a decimal once you remove the prepended character (so a .J32 would follow a .J209)

Sometimes that third "cutter number" is actually a further sub-division of the subject heading and the fourth is the author code. So a biography of Carl Sagan might be QB309.S12.B170 where the "S12" cutter number is a subdivision of astronomical biographies (QB309, I think) for Carl Sagan and the "B170" cutter number is the author code for that book. Regardless, it is first organized by that first letter, and then the number as a decimal.

One might also key the "Genre" attribute to the LC call number (for non-fiction, anyway).... just a thought.

Again, much thanks for considering my suggestion!

I hope you're having a good winter! ;-)

[Grunthos]

We might also need to look into adding a custon sorting plugin to SQLite in order to make sorting via LCCN work. Not sure.

The only other alternative I can think of would be to map LCCNs to floating point values, but that would seem fraught with danger, not to mention probably being impossible.

[emdalton]

Even if we can't sort by LCCN, it would be great to be able to add books by LCCN. Many older books have an LCCN on the copyright page, but no ISBN. Being able to add books by LCCN would be much more accurate than trying to search on author and title.

[eleybourn]

LibraryThing can apparently search LCCN. Something to look into

[Grunthos]

As can OpenLibrary:

https://openlibrary.org/api/books?format=json&jscmd=data&bibkeys=LCCN:93005405

API details here:
https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/books