OCLC has an XML API service intended to be used by _cataloging_ software
(ie, the software that catalogers use to do their work) that does
similar things to what you're talking about, although I'm not sure if it
does exactly what you're talking about. I can't remember what it's
called... ooh, I just remembered, "Terminologies Service". Although
looking at it now, I guess they haven't added LCSH or LCC to it yet. Or
Dewey. Making it's utility limited (although there ARE some
heavy-hitters in there, like AAT, MeSH, and Getty geographic thesaurus).
Whenever I ask an OCLC person about that, they say "oh yeah, they're
coming soon." And whenever I ask an OCLC person if they could license
this service for use by end-user-facing services, and if so what it
would cost... everyone says "Gee, we never realized anyone would be
interested in it for that, I really don't know."
Jonathan
Kyle Banerjee wrote:
> A couple thoughts come to mind with regards to your problem. One is
> that ClassWeb can't be used as a source of data. You can purchase
> records from LC, but frankly I don't think that's a good way to go
> (and it's expensive).
>
> A better approach might be to perform a record extraction from a very
> large library -- preferably a consortium where you can get a lot of
> data. You will need to clean the data to ignore local call numbers,
> low quality records, general numbers given to analyzed series, etc,
> but you could then perform statistical analysis of call number stems
> against subjects, keywords, or whatever you like.
>
> I wouldn't get too attached to trying to make a sensible hierarchy.
> Both the subject headings and classification schedules are more
> enumerative than hierarchical so you will be limited in the depth you
> can achieve. It seems like you could use co occurrence to determine
> the order in part of your display, and facets like a lot of people are
> doing in their catalogs for the rest.
>
> kyle
>
>
>> I need something that will map an LC class number into one of many
>> "subject groups" exactly like or similar to the OCLC Conspectus.
>>
>> Hopefully, I could do this on the fly, programatically, with a web
>> service of some sort.
>>
>> Is this something that Is In Breach of some legal agreement or licensing
>> regarding the OCLC Conspectus? If I look at conspectus reports from a
>> library, look at LC Class ranges in ClassWeb, and build something that
>> maps one to the other, is this ?
>>
>> I just want to do what the OCLC Collection Analysis service does, but
>> one item at a time, to then let users navigate an OPAC by that
>> dimension. (Hopefully, we'd then have a hierarchical way to navigate
>> thru items catalogued with LCCs).
>>
>>
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Fri Feb 01 2008 - 17:13:29 EST