SRU Responses

SRU Responses will include a number of fields that are useful for setting the context of the result set, and result navigation:

• numberOfRecords includes a count of the total result set
• nextRecordPosition shows the starting position of the next item in the result
• query includes the search string in CQL format
• maximumRecords identifies the maximum records returned per request
• startRecord shows the starting position of this request

Other response elements differ, depending on the requested bibliographic record format and the service level requested.

For Dublin Core responses, these elements are useful:

• oclcterms:recordIdentifier includes LCCNs and OCLC identifiers. OCLC identifiers can be selected based on the absence of an xsi:type attribute in the oclcterms:recordIdentifier element.
• dc:identifier includes ISBNs
• dc:title includes the item’s title from the MARC 245 field.
• dc:creator includes creator name(s)
• dc:contributor includes name(s) of editors, translators, etc.
• dc:type includes a string identifying the type of material, which (depending on the MARC record) can also include form and genre
• dc:publisher includes the publication place and publisher name
• dc:date includes the publication date
• dc:description includes note fields from the MARC record
• dc:subject includes subject headings from the MARC record
• dc:relation includes links to related web resources from the MARC 856 field

Those who favor the MARC XML response may already have stylesheets available that can transform the MARC record into their preferred format. We're providing a response in the Library of Congress' MARC 21 XML format ([1]), and there are a variety of existing transformation programs and stylesheets available for converting this data format.

The records use OCLC’s Bibliographic formats (http://www.oclc.org/bibformats/en/about/default.shtm) based on the Bibliographic standards based on the Library of Congress National Level Full & Minimal Requirements (http://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/nlr/).