E-book & Streaming Media Management

With the advancement of increasingly advanced technologies, the shift from print to digital information is underway, and evolving user anticipations are influencing various aspects of library operations, including collection management, space utilization, resource procurement, and the library's role within academia. The transition from print to digital access is swiftly replacing traditional print collections.

The physical-to-electronic workflow is tailored for libraries aiming to streamline the conversion of their print collections into electronic resources, while also seeking an effective method to generate or locate corresponding bibliographic records for these electronic titles.

This workflow is meticulously designed to expedite the process of identifying matching bibliographic records for e-resources by leveraging the 776 field in the MARC record associated with the print material.

776 field in MARC is structured as below:

In the case of a print bibliographic record, when an existing record exists for its online counterpart, the bibliographic record ID is typically located in the subfield w of the 776 field. This ID retrieval process can be done manually, involving individual searches for a list of print titles. Alternatively, this workflow offers a more efficient approach by allowing batch searches for the IDs of electronic titles through the utilization of the WorldCat Metadata API.

The WorldCat Metadata API is an application programming interface provided by OCLC. This API allows developers and libraries to access and retrieve bibliographic metadata from the WorldCat database. The API enables users to search, retrieve, and interact with bibliographic records, making it a valuable tool for tasks such as cataloging, resource discovery, and data enrichment within library systems and applications.

Through the WorldCat Metadata API service, libraries can submit MARCXML bibliographic records to WorldCat, whether as brand-new entries or updates that replace existing records. The service also supports search and read operations, enabling access to existing WorldCat bibliographic records.

All libraries that maintain a OCLC Cataloging and Metadata subscription can request this API. To acquire or inquire about acquiring a WorldCat Metadata API for your institution, please follow these steps:

• To begin, you'll need to initiate the process by requesting a WorldCat Metadata API. Start by clicking the "Request a key" button available on the following webpage: "https://www.oclc.org/developer/api/oclc-apis/worldcat-metadata-api.en.html". Enter your institution's OCLC symbol and proceed to select your institution from the dropdown menu provided. Next, access the WorldCat WSKey Management portal and navigate to the left-hand navigation, where you'll find the "Request a WSKey" option. Here, specify the WorldCat Metadata API Service and assign a name to the API. When indicating the reason for this request, opt for "RequestMARC." As for the Application Type, choose "Machine-to-Machine (M2M) App" to complete the process.
• After your request is successfully processed by OCLC, you will receive an email encompassing vital information: your institution's registry ID, principal ID, and principal IDNS. These three numerical values are imperative for the upcoming Python script detailed in the subsequent section.

• Proceed to log in to the OCLC WSKey Management page, accessible through this link: (https://platform.worldcat.org/wskey/). Check if you have an active WorldCat Metadata API listed. Click on the API entry, as the Client ID and Secret associated with it will be indispensable for the ensuing steps outlined below.

• If you don't have the "bookops_worldcat" package already installed, execute the command "pip install bookops_worldcat" to add it to your setup.
• Download the txt file and the python script in this Git Repository
• Next, access the "credential.txt" file and populate it with your clientID, secret, principal_id, and principal_idns details. To execute the Python code, enter the following line in the command line: "python [path to SearchandGetP-E756.py] [path to the credential.txt]". The Python script will generate several outputs:
  • A comma-separated "finalp-e.txt" (physical oclc and its corresponding electronic oclc). Open the file in excel and create a txt file for the electronic oclc number only. Follow this guide to Download the MARC records of those OCLC numbers using Z39.50
  • Two txt files, 'problem_p_oclc.txt' and 'error_p_oclc.txt'. These two files include physical oclc numbers that do not have electronic oclc number in the 756 field.

By following these steps, you'll be able to extract the e-book's bib records from WorldCat in batch.