Re: Book tagging: Amazon and LibraryThing

From: Hahn, Harvey <hhahn_at_nyob>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2007 13:41:36 -0600
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
I previously wrote:
|Tim Spalding wrote:
||I made an ISBN feed, so libraries could compare their holdings with
||LibraryThing
|
|I've downloaded your file to compare with our public library's
|333,000-record bib database, not all of which have ISBNs. (It'll take
|a while, though--I've got a lot of other things on my plate, too.)

Well (after filtering out microforms, maps, pamphlets, magazines, and
equipment), here are the results for ADULT materials *only*:

[The first line would be read something like this:
145650 (56.6%) of the 257475 ISBNs that our library has in the given
category (in this case, "grand total") matched ISBNs in LibraryThing's
ISBN list]

=====================================================
NUMBER OF ISBNs THAT MATCHED LibraryThing's ISBN LIST
=====================================================

                 Matches   Items     Percent

GRAND TOTAL:     145650    257475    56.6

Book:            139410    216657    64.3
Nonbook:           6240     40818    15.3

Book subtotals:

FICTION TOTAL:    31948     39755    80.4

Fiction:          19537     23969    81.5
Mystery:           7928     10296    77.0
SciFi:             2873      2941    97.7
Western:            281       864    32.5
Gen pbk fic:        472       611    77.3
Romances:           857      1074    79.8

NONFIC TOTAL:     83592    124348    67.2

000's:             2350      3080    76.3
100's:             3504      4753    73.7
200's:             4870      5906    82.5
300's:            11535     19047    60.6
400's:             1142      1460    78.2
500's:             3114      4308    72.3
600's:            18688     29770    62.8
700's:            14331     21615    66.3
800's:             6573     10014    65.6
900's:            11113     16369    67.9
Biographies:       6372      8026    79.4

=====================================================


As I mentioned, I've got other things going on, too, so it may be a week
or two before I can post YOUTH results, unless you don't want/need those
results because of the nature of LT's ISBN list.  By the way, these
breakdowns are pretty easy on our system because we created a
5-character positional code (LOCATION) in every item, based primarily on
formats and DDC/genres.  I massaged the output of our III system to
eventually (after comparing against LT) come up with a file where each
entry had the form "xxxxxiiiiiiiiii n"--x is the positional code, i is
the ISBN, and n is 1 or 0, depending on whether that ISBN was found (via
a binary search) in LT's sorted ISBN list or not.  By using VBS's
regular expression object in an OCLC Connexion OML (VBA-like) macro, I
can do counts on the file using a pattern match on the 5-character codes
and summing the 0/1 results of matching LibraryThing's ISBN list.

I hope these results are interesting and useful!

Harvey

--
===========================================
Harvey E. Hahn, Manager, Technical Services Department
Arlington Heights (Illinois) Memorial Library
847/506-2644 - FX: 847/506-2650 - Email: hhahn(at)ahml(dot)info
OML & Scripts web pages: http://www.ahml.info/oml/
Personal web pages: http://users.anet.com/~packrat
Received on Tue Mar 06 2007 - 13:43:43 EST