[open-bibliography] WorldCat API and Licensing

[Jim Pitman]

I just succeeded in getting a WorldCat Basic Search API Key and
executing a query of the form

http://worldcat.org/webservices/catalog/search/opensearch?q=[query]&wskey=[your key] 

According to the documentation I should be also able to execute

http://www.worldcat.org/webservices/catalog/content/[oclc number]?wskey=[key] 

but I cant seem to make this work. Anybody with experience of this API able to advise? Or suggest
where else I might find help with this?

I notice WorldCat now tolerates Non-Commercial use of data obtained through this API. Even if not ideal, this is way
better than their draconian terms when I last looked a year or so back.
NC seems adequate for my current purpose, which is the creation, maintenance and open publication on the 
web of comprehensive personal bibliographies. It a question for this group what license I could/should place on
such biblios containing records derived by deduplication and enhancement of records from multiple sources 
including WorldCat, MathSciNet, ZMATH, ACM Guide, Microsoft Academic Search, Google Scholar, ....
I am planning to apply CC0, and  to provide  comprehensive links back to whereever the data was derived from.
I expect that no source will dare challenge this and ask me to remove what came from their  records. For if they
do they become less visible as a biblio source. So I propose such deliberate matching and republication
of matched records with links back to sources as a general strategy for opening up biblio data, even data currently held 
by large organizations quite protective of their bibliographic turf.

In particular, I do not see that e.g. the NC clause in the WorldCat API prevents me doing this, provided
I do not put advertizing on my site, which I wont. Neither does it seem that their NC clause prevents
me from offering my cleaned and merged data as JSON/RDF/whatever, which other agents could then harvest from
my site and do what they please with, even commercial things.

Suggestions/reactions welcomed.

--Jim

----------------------------------------------
Jim Pitman
Director, Bibliographic Knowledge Network Project
http://www.bibkn.org/

Professor of Statistics and Mathematics
University of California
367 Evans Hall # 3860
Berkeley, CA 94720-3860

ph: 510-642-9970  fax: 510-642-7892
e-mail: pitman at stat.berkeley.edu
URL: http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/users/pitman