Introduction

Note

This chapter is not yet complete.

About

There are many library catalogues and heritage databases nowadays that have a public API or a downloadable dataset, which makes it possible to use their data in other applications. However, despite the great and longstanding efforts to harmonize library data with standards such as Marc21, BIBFRAME and authority files such as FAST, there is still too much variety in standards to combine data from different APIs and downloadable datasets right away. edpop-explorer aims to provide a common interface to multiple catalogues to both querying and results, while keeping the original data available at all times.

edpop-explorer was created as part of the EDPOP project, [1] an international network that stimulates innovative research on European popular print culture. In this project, a virtual research environment (VRE) is being created to gather and annotate metadata of items in popular print culture. The VRE will rely on edpop-explorer.

Getting started

Python API

A basic search in the Heritage of the Printed Book database of CERL (HPB) looks like this:

>>> from edpop_explorer.readers import HPBReader
>>> reader = HPBReader()
>>> reader.set_query("gruninger")
>>> reader.fetch()  # Start fetching, fetch 10 at a time
>>> reader.number_of_results  # Total number of results for query
2134
>>> reader.number_fetched  # Number of results that have been fetched so far
10
>>> record = reader.records[0]  # A Record object
>>> title = record.title  # A Field object
>>> print(title)
The book of the Mainyo-i-khard
>>> graph = record.to_graph()  # Get an rdflib graph for this record
>>> print(graph.serialize())  # Get turtle serialization
[] a edpoprec:BibliographicalRecord ;
    edpoprec:dating [ a edpoprec:Field ;
            edpoprec:originalText "1871" ] ;
    edpoprec:fromCatalog <https://dhstatic.hum.uu.nl/edpop-explorer/catalogs/hpb> ;
    edpoprec:identifier "UkWE.01.B25967" ;
    edpoprec:publicURL "http://hpb.cerl.org/record/UkWE.01.B25967" ;
    edpoprec:publisherOrPrinter [ a edpoprec:Field ;
            edpoprec:originalText "Carl Grüninger, Augustenstrasse 7 ; Messrs. Trübner and Co., 60 Paternoster Row" ] ;
    edpoprec:title [ a edpoprec:Field ;
            edpoprec:originalText "The book of the Mainyo-i-khard" ] .

Commandline tool

Start the programme from the command line using the edpopx command:

$ edpopx

To perform a search on a database, give the name of the database followed by the query you want to perform, such as:

$ hpb gruninger

This will give you the number of results and a summary of the first ten results. To load more results, use the next command:

$ next

The results are numbered. Use the show command to see the contents of a particular record (use showrdf to see RDF and showraw to see the original record data converted to YAML): [2]

$ show 8

To exit, type Ctrl+D or use the quit command:

$ quit