This repository contains API calls to book search API's (Open Library, Google Books, WorldCat and the Library of Congress) for Chicago Books For Women in Prison, a breakout project at Chi Hack Night. This experiment was conducted to see how well each API performs, i.e. examining type of data provided by each API.
Chicago Books For Women in Prison receives many books as donations. It takes a lot of human power to organize them; entering books in the database so that they are searchable when a request is submitted. This is currently done by manually entering all the information. In order to speed up the process, the organization wants to scan bar code and filling some of the information automatically based on ISBN.
Data wish list:
- Name of Author
- Book Title
- Publisher
- Subjects (This is helpful, because requests are often not specific book but general categories.)
- Image of Book Cover In addition to the organizing donated books, they also want to provide statistics of service, the number of books sent out, number of women received books, etc, to apply grants, journalists and supporters.
To examine each API performance, the following books are selected. The selections are based on a typical books the organization has on their shelves.
| Title | Author | ISBN-13 |
|---|---|---|
| Feelings Buried Alive Never Die | Karol K. Truman | 9780911207026 |
| Exercise for Mood and Anxiety: Proven Strategies for Overcoming Depression and Enhancing Well-Being | Michael Otto, Jasper A.J. Smits | 9780199791002 |
| Stolen: The True Story of a Sex Trafficking Survivor | Katariina Rosenblatt, Cecil Murphey | 9780800723453 |
| We're All Doing Time: A Guide to Getting Free | Bo Lozoff, Dalai Lama | 9780961444402 |
| 12 Stupid Things That Mess Up Recovery: Avoiding Relapse through Self-Awareness and Right Action | Allen Berger | 9781592854868 |
| Overcoming Crystal Meth Addiction: An Essential Guide to Getting Clean | Steven J. Lee | 9781569243138 |
| Mujer Reposiciónate: Revela tu diseño y no dejes que nada te robe la esencia | Yesenia Then | 9789945894752 |
| Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women | Sarah Helm | 9780307278715 |
| Crank | Ellen Hopkins | 9781442471818 |
| Girl, Wash Your Face: Stop Believing the Lies About Who You Are So You Can Become Who You Were Meant to Be | Rachel Hollis | 9781400201655 |
The following API's are selected for the experiment. The selection criteria is:
- Free of charge
- Ability to search using ISBN-13
https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/books (book info) https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/covers (cover images)
https://developers.google.com/books/docs/v1/reference/volumes
xISBN search http://xisbn.worldcat.org/xisbnadmin/index.htm
xISBN search returns url: http://www.worldcat.org/title/stolen-the-true-story-of-a-sex-trafficking-survivor/oclc/869268881?referer=xid#relatedsubjects And related subjects might be very useful. Is there API?
https://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/misc/simple.html https://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/sru-2-0.html
The raw outputs are shared at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WGma3GyIkWflxeyispPX9-HXD5ilAsT-
To be Conducted
Additional information, meeting notes, etc on this project is located at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1lffCTh8G523iETEuOPAoeP3YQ17Dq-AH