There’s been quite a lot of talk lately in library tech circles about OCLC’s new commercial xISBN web service as well as similar free services available from LibraryThing and PINES. From OCLC’s announcement:

The xISBN service is a machine-to-machine service that communicates metadata derived from WorldCat. The goal of xISBN is to help connect different expressions (each identified by an ISBN) of a single work.

For example, if a library owns two copies of the book “Horrible Harry”, each with different ISBNs (paperback and library bound, for example, 0141306742 and 061345278X), the OPAC system can use the xISBN system to join the two records. Or, if the OPAC needs to make links to the newest version of a book in Amazon, or join a database of book reviews, xISBN service can be invaluable.

I’m happy to announce that the Nelsonville Public Library has just put live a new web services module in Koha that supports all three of these services, and exposes the content in a new ‘Editions’ tab on the OPAC detail page for every record. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:

There’s even a nice set of system preferences to manage this new feature. They allow the library to turn the feature on/off, specify whether or not to use ThingISBN, and throttle the number of queries to the xISBN service, ensuring compliance to the terms of the free service (499 queries per day).

This new feature provides an excellent example of the power of web services for delivering enhancements to existing content, and building relationships that aren’t inherent in the data itself.