Open Worldcat for mobile libraries ?

Open Worldcat is a service from OCLC which provides a publicly available and searchable union catalog of library holdings. In addition to the web version, they have built a module for Facebook, a search bar interface for Firefox, and there's a Worldcat interface through Book Burro. So far so good.

What's notably missing is a version of Open Worldcat formatted and ready for mobile phones - something streamlined that would look great on my Blackberry browser or that is a native application for the iPhone. The pages load on my Blackberry but something about the way the HTML is laid out generates a bunch of weird text (as though all of the error messages were being shown). I haven't done the iPhone test yet.

There is some kind of Open Worldcat API, and some sample applications which look promising. So it's plausible to build a mobile version on top of the API, but I don't know enough (yet) to know if it would be actually easy.

Comments

[Edward]

oclc is doing a new license for worldcat data - have not been following this as closely as I might, but here's one note:

http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/blog/archives/582

A look at the Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records revision

...

While OCLC may argue that this would allow libraries to participate in projects like the Open Library, I have a feeling that that’s not the case, for two reasons. First, Open Library does substantially replicate function, purpose and size — but more importantly, Open Library couldn’t accept metadata records that include the OCLC policy of transfer (the licensing terms of currently incompatible with those that Open Library uses last I checked). But more importantly, I believe that this non-compete clause likely makes projects like the one being undertaken by some ILS vendors to create a type of cooperative catalog for users of it’s ILS systems (since here, we are not talking about Z39.50, but an actual creation of a network based service that would provide like a Napster-like functionality allowing users to select records from their ILS network) or stop the creation of a like-minded service by a group of open source developers that may wish to create or build a cataloging service from records from other libraries (say, from the records on Open Library for example). Of course, if that’s not the case, it would be nice if OCLC would provide examples of this type of use within it’s FAQ documentation.