BiblioPage.com

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What is BiblioPage

What is BiblioPage.com?

 

BiblioPage.com is an Amazon Affiliate site.  The main premise behind it is that Libraries are often the best places to find books.  Its data is gathered from book records in libraries around the world via the Z39.50 protocol.  The interface combines library records with Amazon data such as price, sales rank, and suggested titles to give the user a new way of finding books.  In addition to being a unique way of finding books on Amazon, BiblioPage offers many innovations that enhance the book finding experience.  Many of these features can be adopted to fit in with a library web site, ILS, or OPAC.

 

How it Works

 

BiblioPage.com is built with the LAMP stack using Perl/CGI as the main scripting language. 

 

1.         A Perl script searches for MARC records using a dictionary of 10,000 keywords.  All searches are done on the Bib-1 Attribute 1016 (keyword anywhere) in PQN (Prefix Query Notation).  This open ended search is meant to get as many records is possible into the database.  The records are gathered using Net::Z3950 from Indexdata. 

 

2.         Each MARC record is then parsed and relevant fields are inserted into the database using

MARC::Record and DBD::mysql.

 

3.         Only records with an ISBN number are kept in the database.  This is to keep non-book items and other library holdings out of   the database. The database of books is held in a single MySQL table that is now around 300 MB and growing. 

 

Home Page – http://www.bibliopage.com

 

The front page provides a tag-cloud of the top subjects based on Amazon Sales Rank.  The tag-cloud is created by taking the average Sales Rank of the top 75 subject headings according to their size.  At the bottom of the page is five random titles from the database updated daily.

 

Searching – http://www.bibliopage.com/search.cgi?query=Polymers&term=subject

 

Search on BiblioPage.com is powered by MySQL Full-Text.  Currently the user can search based on keyword, title, subject, author, and ISBN.  The Search page returns results 10 at a time.  If the search returns over 50 records a “Related Categories” field appears at the beginning of the results to suggest four or five large subject areas within that search.  Searches can also be sorted by title, author, or subject in alphabetical order. 

 

Popular Authors – http://www.bibliopage.com/authlist.shtml

 

The popular authors page is a list complied of the authors with the largest number of titles to their name. 

 

Detailed Record View - http://www.bibliopage.com/detail.cgi?book=27004

 

The detailed record contains several features.  Whether or not a feature appears is based on the level of detail found in the MARC record. 

 

1.                          All records contain basic bibliographic information along with a jacket image and pricing information from Amazon if available. 

 

2.                          In the <head> section of the HTML each item is described using Dublin Core metadata.

 

3.                          If the record has an LCC number up to 15 books with similar numbers will be displayed in the “Browse the Shelf” window. 

 

4.                          The “Related Subjects” tag cloud will be displayed if the call number associated with the particular item being view also appears in under other subject categories.  These tags are displayed according to the frequency of their appearance in relation to that call number. 

 

About Me

 

My name is Aaron Huber and I am a Librarian I in the Audio Visual department for the public library system of Broward County, FL.  I have an MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences (2005) and a BA in linguistics from the University of Illinois.(2004) You can contact me via the contact link provided on my homepage or at ashuber {at} gmail {dot} com.