The catalog records of the library at CERN,the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, are now under a Public Domain Data License and available for free download. Details from the CERN Library January 2010 press release:
The data of CERN Library will be used by the Open Library Project to provide a webpage for every book and allow users to add content like table of contents, classifications and summaries.
For massive reuse of data, the data will be provided soon by an open Z39.50, SRU and OAI interface via biblios.net, a repository of open bibliographic data.
The whole dataset can be downloaded from http://cern.ch/bookdata
Jens Vigen, Head of the CERN Library, is quoted in the press release: "Books should only be catalogued once. Currently the public purse pays for having the same book catalogued over and over again. Librarians should act as they preach: data sets created through public funding should be made freely available to anyone interested."
Comments