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WorldCat Basic API : At a glance

WorldCat Basic API at a glance

The WorldCat Basic API provides machine-to-machine access to WorldCat for developers.

Benefits

  • Machine-to-machine access to WorldCat, the world’s largest library catalog, for any developer at no charge
  • Available to anyone and everyone for noncommercial use

Features

  • Searches the WorldCat database of more than 150 million bibliographic records contributed by OCLC member libraries worldwide
  • Compatible with searches sent in OpenSearch syntax
  • Responses are available in RSS or Atom format
  • Provides the author and title of results as well as the OCLC number and ISBN
  • Creates a way to include HTML-formatted citations in APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA and Turabian formats
  • Provides access to brief WorldCat records with results sorted using FRBR concepts
  • Includes a link to WorldCat.org to get additional information and links to the libraries that hold that item
  • More detailed developer-level information is on the Developer Network wiki

Requirements

The WorldCat Basic API provides access to the WorldCat databases from clients that can send RESTful URI queries with OpenSearch and can accept RSS, and Atom responses.

Use of the WorldCat Basic API requires a personal access key, which is automatically provided to you upon request. Request a WorldCat Basic API “WSKey” through the WorldCat Affiliates page on WorldCat.org.

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