isbnsearch
isbnsearch provides a simple method for retrieving information about any book using only an ISBN or EAN barcode. It is intended to provide assistance for online libraries, user groups, or individual users, and is designed in such a way to provide a distributed ISBN database query system. Users can choose to view the summary information (author, title, publisher, date, edition, subject, ISBN) as HTML, XML, or a pre-formatted SQL statement.
| Tags | Internet Z39.50 education Information Management Records Management Text Processing Indexing Database Front-Ends |
|---|---|
| Licenses | GPL |
| Operating Systems | OS Independent |
| Implementation | Perl PHP SQL |
Recent releases
- 02 Nov 2004 05:20
Changes: New scripts are included to increase the amount of automation in the verification process. The only remaining manual stages are retrieving the DB.txt file from Net::Z3950::AsyncZ to correspond to the latest release and configuring the scripts for temporary database access. verify.pl still requires manual intervention by using Ctrl-C to eliminate the worst performing servers, but it has also been improved.
- 02 Nov 2004 05:09
Changes: This version includes full support for the new 13 digit ISBN form, and includes a single PHP script to upgrade and recalculate all existing 10 digit ISBN records into the 13 digit form, using the current 978 prefix. The two Perl scripts that run under cron have also been significantly improved, as well as having 13 digit support added. Make sure you run the 13 digit conversion before updating the rest of the files.
- 12 Jul 2004 09:10
Changes: The greatest limitation on any isbnsearch site is the size of the database files. On webhosts, disk space costs money, and most hosting accounts offer hundreds of time less storage than a home system. This can translate into millions of extra ISBN records. To tap into this resource, this version of isbnsearch has been adapted to access systems that are installed behind firewalls and that use dynamic or static IP broadband connections. These portals are called "private" and divided into "Internet-visible" and "non-visible".
- 06 Jul 2004 03:58
No changes have been submitted for this release.
- 27 Dec 2003 18:42
Changes: isbnsearch is finally out of beta. 0.4 marks the first stable release and, for the first time, includes a proven method of installing all files without the need to go asking favors from the Webhosts. All the information is in the package documentation. With 0.4, the setup is all done at the start, and the site just continues to search, cache, and link to other isbnsearch sites without any administrator involvement. At 10,000-20,000 records a day, it won't take long to build a sizable database of your own.
- All comments
Recent commentsisbnsearch v0.5 released
A distributed search portal of common sources of ISBN
numbers, with permanent caching of results. To
provide a free software, open-source, interface for
ISBN retrieval using HTML, SQL or XML to be
independent of any toolkits or software.
Version 0.5 has now been released and includes
support for the 13digit ISBN format and scripts to
recalculate all existing 10 digit ISBN records.
isbnsearch scripts will still output the 10 digit form until
the 13 digit forms start appearing.
There are also improvements to the matching.php
script and the two Perl scripts
13 digit ISBN number changes
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/iso/tc46sc9/isbn.htm
The 13digit ISBN is an extension of existing EAN barcodes
which isbnsearch already supports. As well as using the
existing 978 prefix (plus check digit), the 979 prefix will also
be used for ISBN details.
A 13 digit ISBN could therefore start 9-78 or 9-79. All
existing ISBN's will remain available as 9-78 and any 10
digit ISBN entered will be converted to 13 digits using 9-78.
To retain the ISBN as a unique reference, newly printed
ISBN's will eventually include the 978 or 979 instead of just
assuming 978 - in effect, the ISBN is becoming the EAN.
isbnsearch will require small adjustments to the database
tables and the scripts to correctly verify the 979 namespace
and this work is now under way.
Although 13 digit ISBN numbers won't be in use for a while
yet, isbnsearch will be moving to a 13 digit system by
adding the 978 and the appropriate checksum to existing
records using small changes to the database tables.
I anticipate having the basic transfer method in place for the
next release of isbnsearch (which will be v0.5). This will
enable sites to upgrade the existing tables to 13 digits. This
will be a background change *only* - to avoid confusion with
the users, all web pages and scripts will continue to display
ISBN values in 10 digit form for some time.
Currently, scripts convert any EAN to the 10 digit ISBN. The
next release of isbnsearch will reverse this so that all 10
digit ISBN's are converted to 13 digits using 978. v0.5 will
include a single script that recalculates all your existing
tables.
The new ISBN is a simple mathematical derivation of the
old and both are already supported, so each site operator
will be able to change over in their own time.
isbnsearch-0.41 released
isbnsearch-0.41
The greatest limitation on any isbnsearch site is the size of
the database files. On webhosts, webspace costs money
and most hosting accounts offer hundreds of time less
storage than a home system. This can translate into
millions of extra ISBN records. To tap into this resource,
v0.41 of isbnsearch has been adapted to access systems
that are installed behind firewalls and using dynamic or
static IP broadband connections. These portals are called
'private' and divided into 'internet-visible' and 'non-visible'.
There are two new files in www/, designed to help an
indexserver to communicate with linked portals, other
indexservers or private sites. missing.php does not need
configuration.
matching.php is a new script and will be a useful tool in the
overall distributed framework for isbnsearch.
Indexservers can now arrange to share data with other
indexservers to reduce the number of pending records
listed on overloaded indexservers. It should be called from
your local indexserver and can query all pending records of
the chosen remote indexserver, 1,000 titles at a time. Any
records on your site that match pending records on the
remote site will be written to a temporary XML file,
temp/missing.xml. matching.php then offers a WWW link to
the chosen indexserver to allow collection of the XML file.
You will see the results of the import and be provided with a
suitable link back to your own indexserver with the next
1,000 records. It is possible to automate this process using
GNU/Linux utilities like wget - please report all experiences
to the mailing list.
The chosen indexserver MUST be configured to accept
data from your site. Operators must request this service
from the maintainer of the chosen indexserver using the
mailing list by giving the full URL of their site. The
indexserver maintainer can then verify the availability of
your site - if this fails or is unacceptably slow, the
indexserver maintainer is free to decline the request - and
add appropriate details to the configuration of private.php on
the remote indexserver. Without this permission, you can
run the match against the pending titles, but the remote
indexserver will not import the data - the temp/missing.xml
file will simply be overwritten.
An 'internet visible' private portal has a static IP and a valid
DNS name, the indexserver must be able to resolve the
name and retrieve a file from the private portal using HTTP
on port 80. It is NOT necessary for HTTP on the private
portal to provide any service to the general internet. Any
private portal that cannot provide a local file over the internet
in this way (dynamic IP, firewalls etc.) is deemed
'non-visible' for the purposes of this section.
devel branch
The main isbnsearch package is now mature and needs
only small enhancements and bug fixes. The
isbnsearch-devel package, by comparison, is in continued
development and files and structures are likely to continue
to change considerably over the next few releases.
The aim is to increase the automation of the server update,
verification and reporting process. For full information, see
the isbnsearch project home page
http://isbnsearch.sourceforge.net/ or the HTML
documentation in the devel package.
Request for new sites
isbnsearch v0.4 marks the first stable release and
includes a proven mechanism to install all files without
any need to go asking favours from the webhosts. All the
information is in the package documentation.
Please help by installing isbnsearch at one of your
domains - the more sites are in use, the more titles can
be cached and the better the service becomes for the
users. Some 600,000 titles are cached already (<200Mb
on disk) but that is just a fraction of the total. A standard
webhost account with 100-200Mb is the basic setup but
if anyone has a Gig or two of MySQL space at any
domain, it would make my year!
With v0.4, the setup is all done at the start and the site
just continues to search, cache and link into other
isbnsearch sites without any admin involvement. At
10-20,000 records a day, initially, it won't take long to
build a sizeable database of your own.