[open-bibliography] OCLC's license for FAST

Wed Jan 4 23:25:51 UTC 2012

Quoting Tom Morris <tfmorris at gmail.com>:

> I think the decomposed structure is more user-friendly and useful, but
> scraping the OCLC site strikes me as an unnecessary level of
> indirection.  You're still at the mercy of OCLC's proprietary
> processing script and hosting.  If they decide to pull the plug,
> you're left out in the cold.

Here's the link to the FAST converter. It's not quite as simple as  
just breaking apart the headings at the dash-dash points:

http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/fastconverter/default.htm

The advantage of using the OCLC version is that it will be kept up to  
date. I don't know what the converter, run periodically, would result  
in, but perhaps someone can reason that out from the code?

kc

>
> Why not go straight to the source and process the LCSH  in the same or
> similar fashion and cut the OCLC out of the loop?  Then you could
> publish not only the data, but the script used to derive it.
>
> Tom
>
>>
>> kc
>>
>>
>> Quoting Thad Guidry <thadguidry at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> So, they say Contents ("data" part of database) are available... however
>>> we
>>> cannot give you the structure ("base" part of Database).
>>>
>>> Karen, I honestly STILL do not see the value in OCLC Fast.
>>>
>>> http://experimental.worldcat.org/fast/556581/  Why is the data here, more
>>> valuable then these 2:
>>>
>>> http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n81050796.html
>>>
>>> http://www.freebase.com/edit/topic/en/tallinn_university_of_technology
>>>
>>> ??
>>>
>>> Please explain, I am interested to know more.
>>>
>>> --
>>> -Thad
>>> http://www.freebase.com/view/en/thad_guidry
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Karen Coyle
>> kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>> skype: kcoylenet
>>
>>
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>
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-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle at kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet