Using the API

WorldCat Identities can be interacted with in two fashions:

• Direct Linking
• Searching

Identity pages can be linked to directly via two methods:

• LCCN or Proper Name
• OpenURL

In addition, the Identities database can be searched Identities in three ways:

• NameFinder searches
• SRU searches
• Autosuggest searches

Responses from the Identities web services take four forms

• Single Identity Record
• NameFinder search results
• SRU search results which contain several Identity records
• AutoSuggest results which are a highly simplified JSON response

Identities uses Content Negotiation to facilitate access to responses in different formats.

Therefore different the Accept/Header retrieve content in different formats. Below is a table of the Accept Headers recognized by Identities, the format of the corresponding response and the corresponding URL for accessing the data without using Accept/Headers.

Searches done via SRU use an httpAccept parameter to allow this to be set via the URL rather than an Accept Header