New sources now in "beta": Bol/Bruna, KB and KBR

UPDATE: See the blog post.

I've uploaded the code that interfaces with Bol and Bruna, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België.

To add these sources go to "Add books" and click on "choose from 78 other sources around the world" (kies uit 78 andere bronnen wereldwijd).

I'm going to blog about it soon. Some initial points:

*Bol/Bruna is still missing a number of covers. They're loading now.
*The Bol/Bruna data was not designed or cataloging purposes. But it's got the Dutch in-print catalog, and will soon have all the covers.
*KB is good, but slow. ISBNs only sometimes work in searches.
*KBR is fast, but choppy. Search is title only.

Lastly, for what it's worth, and without whining too much:

This is our big Dutch push. I've been thinking and breathing Dutch bibliographic data for a week now. I've scoured the web for potential sources, and Giovanni, our new European employee, has worked his book connections. The technical challenges have been great. Bol/Bruna involved turning two different downloaded formats into a seamless API. (We're basically making and feeding ourselves Bol/Bruna data in Amazon-flavored XML.) KB involved learning both SRU and Dublin Core, parallel to the Z39.50 and MARC standards I learned when LibraryThing first started, but much less useful. KB involved a bespoke screen-scraping utility.

We're hoping this all matters. We have a Dutch library announcement that will get some attention, and LibraryThing itself will apparently be getting some press. (I only just found out and it had nothing to do with why we did it.) But, if you like the directions we're going, please do what you can to get the word out. This took a lot of effort and pushed our Facebook development back at least a week. Don't tell non-Dutch people, okay? ;) If it doesn't garner any interest, small-language efforts like this one are not likely to get the same sort of attention.

Wooha! This is great!

I just added a book from the Bol/Bruna data and it works perfect. No essential data missing. So don't be to hard for yourself, Tim ;-).

A wonderful job! I am sure the Dutch members will appreciate it as it make adding books to our catalog much more easier for us.

ps. I won't tell about the Facebook ;-)

Sorry for the slightly sour tone. I loved the idea of doing this, but some of the SRU/DC development had me crying. (PHP doens't handle namespaces very well, and the KB doesn't support some of the queries their documentation promises.)

Hey there!

I'm a new Dutch user of LT, and it's the best, especially with al the Dutch-specific options!
One question though; adding books by an ISBN-search when using the KB (Dutch Koninklijke Bibliotheek) data for me frequently results in a correct 'answer' (contrary to earlier findings). Though, when I try to really 'add' the book to my collection (for example 'De Verrader' by Frederick Forsyth) in this method, I receive an error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function children() on a non-object in /var/www/html/inc_externalbooksearch.php on line 210

Which means I couldn't import the book. I had a quick look at the LT http-command to add this book of the KB-catalogue into my collection, the http-command reads this:

http://www.librarything.com/amazonapprove.php?&pickRecord=1&Search=97890... Bibliotheek

Though, by changing the http-command into this, it worked fluently:

http://www.librarything.com/amazonapprove.php?&pickRecord=1&Search=90229... Bibliotheek

Therefore, I think the problem is, that the LT http-command automatically changes the ISBN into the 'newer' ISBN-type, whereas the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB)-library only accepts the 'older' ISBN-type.
It would be very helpful for me if you could change the http-command, so I can automatically add books by ISBN via the Dutch Koninklijke Bibliotheek! (I think it's not a very big adjustment so I'm hoping it can be fixed)

Thank you very much!

Jeo:

You are one smart cookie. I was translating ISBN10 to ISBN13 for the Bruna/Bol search. I actually found this out before you posted, but I was amazed you figured it out without looking at the code. It took me a while to suss out a series of trailing bugs, but I think it's good now.

Thanks!

Hi Tim,

just discovered LibraryThing and it's great! I've added some Dutch books and it worked, adding some everyday now. If I can be of any assistance in developing the Dutch pages, let me know (translating etc). Furthermore, I will give Librarything some airplay at our weblog (blog.kennisland.nl) and newsletter (2700 members)

Grtz, Geert
www.kennisland.nl

Wow! After months of adding my Dutch art books manually, or praying that some German library has them, the KB is now available for importing books. Just in time for me to catalogue my Dutch literature/literary history section--a small holding, but it would have taken ages to enter everything manually.
This is wonderful.

I'm loving it too! It even works with the CueCat! I got it yesterday and already entered over 400 books :-) 400 down, approx. 4,000 to go (yikes!).

Since Tim fixed the bug mentioned in message # 5, I can even scan the backs of most recent Dutch books and automatically find the book in the KB or Bol/Bruna catalogues.

One small bug still remains: Often LT does not automatically add the books found this way so I still have the link.

Question: you said that the covers from Bol will be added, will this automatically work for books I've already added or will I have to re-enter the books? It would be great if it could automatically add the covers for the books I already entered. Technically, I think it should be possible since LT knows the ISBN.

Great stuff Tim, thx!

>One small bug still remains: Often LT does not automatically add the books found this way so I still have the link.

You mean that it doesn't click the link for you if you enter an ISBN, right?

>Technically, I think it should be possible since LT knows the ISBN.

They should be working, as long as you entered the ISBN. (ISBN10 vs. 13 doens't matter.) If you find problems, tell us.

Well, I'm only a member since a couple of days, so I don't know how it was before this site was linked to Bol/Bruna and de KB. I can only say that it was very easy to add a lot of books at once.
And I sent e-mails to a lot of my friends, I hope they will become members too. If they don't I will haunt them as long as it takes ;-)

Excellent. Thanks. Haunt!

Brilliant!

I have been putting off adding my literature and children's books, as it is a lot of trouble adding them by hand, and lots of specifically Dutch titles wouldn't be owned by anyone else anyway. This will boost my efforts for completing my library considerably.

Now let's hope lots more Dutch books will be added, so once in a while a Dutch title will be among my recommendations ;-)

Ha. Fair enough. But it does give you the occasional Dutch title for a book, doesn't it? If you're on the .nl site you should get De Hobbit not The Hobbit.

>14 timspalding:

Yes, I should have been more precise. I meant titles by Dutch authors.

Regarding the Koninklijke Bibliotheek data: The Dutch have the unfortunate habit (from LT point of view) to use the same ISBN for consecutive imprints. This means an ISBN search in the KB could and frequently does yield several hits. Do you think it would be possible to show imprint data with the hits, to facilitate choosing the right one?

Can you give me an example?

Can you give me an example?

Sorry, I was away from the computer...

If you check ISBN 9060691180 in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek database, you get five different hits, from 1972, 1973, 1977, 1982 and 1996 respectively.

I've imported them all, so you can see. The Book is Oorlogswinter.

Hope this helps.

By the way, I'm absolutely thrilled by the way KB-searches work. I don't find them too slow, and most of my ISBN-searches have worked, so far.

The fact that it doesn't show that way in my statistics is, I think, because KB imports are listed as Bruna/Bol imports???

That's true: it's shows the source as bruna.com in the fun statistics of your profile.

Damn. Okay. Will look at.

The KB doesn't seem to work anymore. You get a hit, but if you click on it, there is a message that the title doesn't exist anymore. Any idea what to do?

The KB doesn't seem to work anymore. You get a hit, but if you click on it, there is a message that the title doesn't exist anymore. Any idea what to do?

Blech. I'll take a look.

T

I had trouble yesterday, but today it seems to be OK again.

Phew!

I don't know what you did Tim, but it's working again. I must say, this catalogue is really great. I'm a librarian, and I like the look and feel of librarything.com.

I feel like that doctor in Restoration—I did nothing and the patient recovered.

Dear Tim,

When searching the KB database on writer, title etc (so others than ISBN) you easily get several results. This means you'll get several pages to browse. Problem is that this doesn't work. Every time I hit the 'Next' button I get to stay on the same (first) page of search results. This problem doesn't appear on other databases like Amazon, Library of Congress etc.

Best,
Antoine