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RayBB edited this page Mar 1, 2026 · 1 revision

Guide to Identifiers

Best practices were discussed at http://webservices.itcs.umich.edu/mediawiki/oaibp/index.php/IdentifyingTheResource, although that site has been frozen since mid-2007 when the DLF was reabsorbed into CLIR to form https://www.diglib.org. Current best practices may vary.

The following tables list Author Identifiers and Edition Identifiers, including the identifier name, description, example, and link to additional documentation.

Author Identifiers

ID Description Example Docs
OLID Open Library author record OL1234A Open Library API
LCAuth Library of Congress authority ID https://id.loc.gov/authorities/no2013090983 Library of Congress Authorities
VIAF ID Virtual International Authority File identifier e.g. 12345678 VIAF
ISNI International Standard Name Identifier e.g. 000000012146438X ISNI
ORCID Open Researcher and Contributor ID 0000-0001-2345-6789 ORCID
WD ID Wikidata item identifier Q6290611 Wikidata

Edition Identifiers

ID Description Example Docs
OCLCid OCLC control number e.g. 12345678 OCLC Help
LCCN Library of Congress Control Number e.g. 2002022641 LCCN Namespace
OLID Open Library ID OL234M Open Library API
OCAID Open Content Alliance ID (Archive.org item identifier) e.g. 12345678 Archive.org
HTID Hathi Trust ID e.g. HT123456789 Hathi Trust Data
Google ID Google Books ID zyTCAlFPjgYC Google Books Partner Help

Open Library identifiers on Archive.org

Archive.org and Open Library items were previously connected using a metadata field called openlibrary on Archive.org and a field called ocaid on Open Library (short for Open Content Alliance ID; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Content_Alliance).

These openlibrary IDs became stale and were rarely used. Two new fields were added to replace the openlibrary field on Archive.org: openlibrary_edition and openlibrary_work.

If I recall @hank and @judec informed me the openlibrary metadata key is actually being used in certain places within our derive pipelines — this code has never been updated to use openlibrary_edition and openlibrary_work.

Retrieving Archive.org data for an Open Library identifier

For any given openlibrary_edition, you can use this ID to pull the MARC record from Open Library to verify metadata matches. Alternatively, if you have a book on Archive.org (for example, jungleauthoritat00sinc) with an openlibrary_edition of OL3561303M, you can retrieve the JSON API data at https://openlibrary.org/books/OL3561303M.json to check the values without needing the MARC record.

Open Library

{
  "covers": [253146],
  "ocaid": "jungleauthoritat00sinc",
  "key": "/books/OL3561303M",
  "identifiers": {
    "goodreads": ["54855"],
    "librarything": ["3414"]
  },
  "lccn": ["2002026536"],
  "isbn_10": ["039397779X"]
}

Archive.org identifiers

<isbn>9780393977790</isbn>
<isbn>039397779X</isbn>
<openlibrary>OL3561303M</openlibrary>
<external-identifier>urn:asin:039397779X</external-identifier>
<external-identifier>urn:acs6:jungleauthoritat00sinc:pdf:0c7cfd74-4178-4606-aad6-82c7dd226004</external-identifier>
<external-identifier>urn:acs6:jungleauthoritat00sinc:epub:e2b0f076-2d77-44b4-bbbd-75e14c654c2c</external-identifier>
<external-identifier>urn:oclc:record:1035882283</external-identifier>
<boxid>IA1138320</boxid>
<identifier>jungleauthoritat00sinc</identifier>
<containerid>S0022</containerid>
<identifier-access>http://archive.org/details/jungleauthoritat00sinc</identifier-access>
<identifier-ark>ark:/13960/t9n33ns5x</identifier-ark>
<oclc-id>473022932</oclc-id>
<oclc-id>492015570</oclc-id>
<oclc-id>50143929</oclc-id>
<oclc-id>611841594</oclc-id>
<oclc-id>750905675</oclc-id>
<oclc-id>845516453</oclc-id>
<oclc-id>849008372</oclc-id>
<lccn>2002026536</lccn>

Please use the new docs site for the developers handbook.

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