Book Providers (or just ‘providers’) are the Ruby classes in Alexandria which access online web services to download book information. These include web-scrapers (e.g. Worldcat?), proper purpose-designed RESTful web services (e.g. Amazon ECS) and custom protocols (particularly Z39.50).

Current Providers

Web Services

• Amazon? – soon to be deprecated, requires Ruby/Amazon
• Amazon ECS – new in 0.6.3, requires hpricot

Web-Scrapers

Some of these web-scrapers might not work properly any more, as small changes in web pages can break the scraping code. They should be tested, updated if necessary, and documented.

• Adlibris? – (Sweeden)
• Barnes and Noble? – (USA)
• BOL? – (Italy)
• DeaStore? – +, requires +mechanize
• Internet Book Shop? – (Italy)
• Livraria Siciliano? – (Brasil)
• Spanish Culture Ministry? – (Spain)
• Proxis? – (Belgium)
• Renaud-Bray? – (Canada)
• Thalia? – (Germany)
• Webster? – (Italy)
• Worldcat?

Z39.50

• Library of Congress? – (USA)
• British Library – (UK)

It is also possible to add your own Z39.50 providers. Any notable or problematic hosts should be noted here.

Problematic Z39.50 Hosts

• BIBSYS? – (Norway), requires ‘piggybacking’ be disabled (this is done automatically in Alexandria 0.6.3)

Suggested Providers

• Casa del Libro? – (Spain) http://www.casadellibro.com/ [Feature request #1408] “a lot of books and images”
• Suomalainen kirjakauppa – (Finland) http://www.suomalainen.com/sk/ “Finnish provider”
• nl.bol.com? – (Netherlands), http://nl.bol.com/ [Feature request #11613], “very wide range of Dutch books”
• Flemish Public Library (Vlaamse Centrale Catalogus)? – (Belgium), http://zoeken.bibliotheek.be/ [Feature request #11613], “this is the central catalogue of all Flemish libraries – a very very wide range of Dutch books and books in German, French, English, Spanish, Arabic,...”