

On Building A Library - unimpressive
http://softholmsyndrome.com/2014-11-3-to-build-a-library-part-one

======
onaclov2000
Love this, we have a similar issue with the library at work, no library
system, our librarian quit and they never replaced them, I built some stuff
that your'e welcome to base some stuff off of it's on github and uses
angularjs and firebase :)

I used openlibrary to pull the metadata (not sure the restrictions), but may
be nice to mirror all that data somewhere for low/no cost?

[https://github.com/onaclovtech/library](https://github.com/onaclovtech/library)

I also use this for my personal library at home (nice when you go out to
verify you own a particular book of a series already).

Good luck!

~~~
unimpressive
> I used openlibrary to pull the metadata (not sure the restrictions), but may
> be nice to mirror all that data somewhere for low/no cost?

If you mean the Internet Archives OpenLibrary project that data is apparently
in a messy legal situation:

[https://openlibrary.org/developers/licensing](https://openlibrary.org/developers/licensing)

The Internet Archive actually has an API that I didn't notice and would have
coded against instead if I'd known about it, I'll probably add a mention of it
to the article as an alternate source of ISBN numbers:

[https://openlibrary.org/developers/api](https://openlibrary.org/developers/api)

~~~
onaclov2000
I hadn't read that first one, but yea I used the developers API for my stuff,
I have been using AngularJS so I made a service it's located here:
[https://github.com/onaclovtech/library/blob/master/library.j...](https://github.com/onaclovtech/library/blob/master/library.js)

it's an ISBN search only, but could be improved.

------
secabeen
If you tried using the barcodes, what you'd find is that before the mid-90s,
many publishers did not make the barcode match the ISBN. Although the book has
an ISBN and a barcode, the barcode data is for some alternate
publisher/bookseller system. It was very frustrating to realize this when
cataloging my books around 2000.

------
iand
One thing you should be aware of is that ISBNs can be reused. In theory they
shouldn't, but mistakes happen as well as temporary shortages of ISBNs
allocated to publishers.

If you want a free and unencumbered source of ISBN data then try the British
National Bibliography dataset from the British Library. See
[http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/download.html](http://www.bl.uk/bibliographic/download.html)
or browse online
[http://bnb.data.bl.uk/doc/resource/012877800](http://bnb.data.bl.uk/doc/resource/012877800)

