Dummy Catalog Data
September 21, 2017 1:23 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for data I could use to populate a library catalog that I'm building. A while ago, I posted this on Projects. Now I'm at the point where I'm working to build my own catalog to test it out. The only problem is that I need some records to fill it with. Ideally they would be between 10,000 and 30,000 and only books.
I'd like the records to contain Title, Author, ISBN, Publication Details, Physical Description, Summary, and Subject Headings. I've looked high and low trying to find something online and even gone as far as asking the library system I work for if I could have theirs, but to no avail.
A little more detail about the catalog: I'm building it using Django, specifically from this tutorial. Something I could import in would be great. I'm assuming CSV, JSON, XML, etc. should all work.
Any help on tracking down a dataset would be greatly appreciated!
I'd like the records to contain Title, Author, ISBN, Publication Details, Physical Description, Summary, and Subject Headings. I've looked high and low trying to find something online and even gone as far as asking the library system I work for if I could have theirs, but to no avail.
A little more detail about the catalog: I'm building it using Django, specifically from this tutorial. Something I could import in would be great. I'm assuming CSV, JSON, XML, etc. should all work.
Any help on tracking down a dataset would be greatly appreciated!
Best answer: Maybe query this api? http://isbndb.com/api/v2/docs
posted by advicepig at 1:34 PM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by advicepig at 1:34 PM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Best answer: Tried the Library of Congress website? They make their MARC records easily available.
posted by orrnyereg at 1:36 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by orrnyereg at 1:36 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I have an awful lot of MARC records from NYPL I think... (might not all be books) that I'd happily put up on Dropbox for you. You can also get similar sets from LoC and Open Library.
posted by jessamyn at 1:46 PM on September 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by jessamyn at 1:46 PM on September 21, 2017 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Yeah, LOC published their 2014 Retrospective file sets for open access recently here in UTF8, MARC8 and XML formats. I haven't had time to look closely, but I'd imagine that should get you started, and once you've gotten started it's a nearly endless supply of records.
posted by wotsac at 2:40 PM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by wotsac at 2:40 PM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Thank you all so much! I don't know how I didn't manage to find the LOC MARC records during my search. Some librarian I am...
posted by holmesian at 3:55 PM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by holmesian at 3:55 PM on September 21, 2017 [2 favorites]
came to suggest scraping LOC.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:04 PM on September 22, 2017
posted by aspersioncast at 2:04 PM on September 22, 2017
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posted by jadepearl at 1:31 PM on September 21, 2017 [1 favorite]