WorldCat Search API enhanced; Plans announced for WorldCat Basic API

The WorldCat Search API has been enhanced so that now developers can build apps that limit by an individual library's holding symbol, without authentication, at all service levels.

With this functionality update, the eligibility requirements for the WorldCat Search API have also been updated.

New applications for the service will require that the library contributes to WorldCat and subscribes to WorldCat on FirstSearch or maintains a WorldCat subscription.

All of the more than 200 current WorldCat Search API WSKeys will remain active through at least Sept. 1, 2010. Any future request, however, will need to meet these new eligibility requirements.

Dawn Hendricks, WorldCat Search API product manager, explains that "current WorldCat Search API users are encouraged to continue creating new apps and mashups with the service to provide additional value for their libraries."

A new API for all: WorldCat Basic
OCLC announces its plans to offer a simple API into WorldCat for anyone and everyone in the world to use, for noncommercial use. Called the WorldCat Basic API, it will provide a mashable access point for lightweight apps built by developers who may or may not have ties to the library community.

Planned for release later this year, the WorldCat Basic API will use OpenSearch technology and return feeds in Atom and RSS. Results include OCLC number links to WorldCat.org, ISBNs and formatted citations.

"We have been wanting to do a completely open API to WorldCat for a long time now," remarks Roy Tennant, one of the OCLC Developer Network founders. "I am eager to see it in action."

Developers everywhere are encouraged to exercise their creativity to create new mash-ups that make use of WorldCat data through the APIs and other WorldCat widgets.

OCLC Web Services continue to offer ways to connect people with knowledge through libraries, and for libraries to reap the benefits of library cooperation.

(2009 08 26)