Re: Link to imdb Internet Movie Database

From: Jonathan Rochkind <rochkind_at_nyob>
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 15:50:06 -0500
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> A published cross-reference of identifier systems would be useful, and
> a fairly cheap by-product of such indexing.
>
Wow, that's the understatement of the year. I hadn't even though of
that. But anyone who does add an IMDB url to a catalog has established a
relatinship between possibly oclcnum, lccn, or isbn, and IMDB
url/identifier. If all those things could be harvested into an
aggregated database of those relationships, that would be HUGELY useful,
and enable the rest of us to provide those links _without_ having to
individually establish them.

Good call Jeremy. I wonder if there are any large catalogs that have
already done this, that we could harvest to prime the pump?

Now I have visions of setting up a z39.50 harvester to go look through
everyone's catalog for movies with imdb urls, and add them to a database
with corresponding identifiers.

Then watch imdb change their identifier or url system. Doh!

Jonathan

>
>> IMDB is a well-established site, and is certainly the best out there
>> for its subject. It's fairly comprehensive; I don't think you need to
>> worry about the content you'll be linking out to.
>>
>>
>
> If interested, all of IMDB's freely-available data is available for
> download and direct use.  (There is a for-pay service of IMDB as well;
> that data is not freely downloadable.)
> http://www.imdb.com/interfaces
>
> And here are licensing terms for that data:
> http://us.imdb.com/Licensing/
>
> Also, here is a linking guide:
> http://www.imdb.com/help/?using/
>
> I suspect that much indexing effort could be saved by automatically
> making a list of candidates for each holding and having a worker
> review those choices.
>
>

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Thu Nov 08 2007 - 16:07:21 EST