ACE | Search Tool Survey

Notes on standards and formats supported by resources of interest to our audience. For each resource, please note:

  1. Standard interfaces/protocols supported (e.g. SOAP, REST, Z39.50, OAI, SRU/SRW)
  2. Input/return formats
  3. Location of further info/documentation
  4. Scope/topic areas

General info on common standards/interfaces:

  • SRU: http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/
  • SRW: http://www.loc.gov/standards/sru/srw/index.html (SOAP over HTTP)
  • SOAP: http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/ (implementations will vary)
  • REST: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2004/08/11/rest.html
  • OAI: http://www.openarchives.org/documents/index.html
  • Z39.50: http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/
  • OpenSearch?: http://opensearch.a9.com/spec/1.1/ (draft...)

Amazon Web Service

  1. Supports REST and SOAP interfaces. Requires developer acct (free registration). Some limits on number of accesses unless you have a paid account.
  2. Input: construct REST url or SOAP message according to Amazon's specs. Returns XML in a well-documented format. See WSDL: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/AWSECommerceService.wsdl
  3. More info: http://www.amazon.com/webservices
  4. Scope: almost unlimited in topic areas, formats, etc. Includes basic descriptive data (title, author, subject areas, etc), cover art, reviews, user-constructed lists, references to similar items, etc.

Note: Few respondents said they use Amazon. Easy to access and work with, but should probably be lower priority.

Google Web Service

  1. SOAP. Requires developer acct (free registration). Some limitations...e.g. daily limit of 1000 queries.
  2. Input: construct REST url or SOAP message according to Google specs. Returns XML in well-documented format. See WSDL: http://api.google.com/GoogleSearch.wsdl
  3. More info: http://www.google.com/apis/
  4. Scope: search Google index, cache, or get spelling correction.

Library of Congress, Other Library Catalogs via z39.50 Gateway.

  1. Standard: Z39.50
  2. Input/output: See specs for Z39.50 protocol
  3. More info: http://www.loc.gov/z3950/gateway.html
  4. Scope: Bibliographic records, almost unlimited in terms of topic areas.

CDL Mets Repository

  1. Supports OAI-PMH 2.0 for harvesting, METS for object encoding, ARK persistent identifiers
  2. Input: CGI syntax link; Output: XML link
  3. More info: http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/repository/
  4. Scope: images, texts, finding aids; significant archival collections

CDL Experimental Catalog

  1. Supports REST-style queries.
  2. Documentation not yet publicly available. Input: base URL plus key-values pairs corresponding to searchable indices and specified search operations. Output: XML
  3. Will write and provide more info asap.
  4. Scope: testbed of about 4.5 million bibliographic records across all topic areas (mirrors UCLA collection).

Internet Public Library

  1. Can formulate URL to send keyword query via CGI.
  2. Input: base URL plus keywords; can limit by collection. Output: XHTML
  3. More info: http://www.ipl.org/
  4. Scope: internet resources in many topic areas, organized into defined collections

Wikipedia

  1. Supports OpenSearch? queries
  2. Input: Templated HTTP query. Output: XML response (extension to ATOM or RSS)
  3. http://opensearch.a9.com/spec/1.1/
  4. Scope: encyclopedia, vast scope in terms of topic areas