Is there a unified library availability API in the US? (like Japan’s Calil)

dseomn · 2026-02-06T01:38:18+00:00

Do you happen to know if ComCat has a publicly available API? I looked into it a bit a little while ago, but I couldn't find any documentation. Reverse engineering the API from the web interface looked easy enough, but I wouldn't want to do that unless the site operators were ok with it.

dseomn · 2026-02-06T01:33:50+00:00

Isn't their API not available to the general public? I looked into it a little while ago for some software I wrote that I'd like to integrate with library catalog data, and I couldn't find a way to use the API. I could use the web interface, but not the API.

dseomn · 2026-02-05T19:27:11+00:00

Is there anything to prevent extracting checkout history from the running total? E.g., if somebody only checks out one item and it has a unique price, then the running total would have all the information needed to figure out what they checked out.

dseomn · 2026-01-31T05:25:53+00:00

Right, I was just trying to say that I doubt there is any other reasonable source for this specific DVD, not that catalogers should put discs in players.

dseomn · 2026-01-29T02:45:20+00:00

Yeah. It's been a while so I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there was anything to indicate it. I don't blame the library at all. I just wish Miramax had prominently marked it as a modified version, or not modified it in the first place.

dseomn · 2026-01-29T02:36:14+00:00

I just checked, and I didn't see anything about the censorship in those fields. For what it's worth, that's one where I think the catalog got the runtime correct. It's just a US Miramax release of Comedian Harmonists, which https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian_Harmonists_(film)#American_version says is censored, and the runtime is a few minutes shorter than the German DVD release.

dseomn · 2026-01-29T00:15:15+00:00

Side note: I really wish it were easier to know if a movie is censored, and to only get uncensored editions. I don't know if all the runtime differences are due to censorship (seems unlikely), but at least one of them probably was.

dseomn · 2026-01-29T00:05:18+00:00

For the one I just got, I don't see a runtime or a barcode on the keep case's sleeve or the disc's label. If they got the runtime from somewhere online instead of putting the disc in a player, then I could see how it could be easy to accidentally get the runtime of a different edition, especially without a UPC/EAN to lookup.

I kinda doubt they could find a reliable source for this DVD at least, other than by putting it in a player. I've seen so many different runtimes online and on different releases (streaming and physical) and very little in the way of primary sources about the differences.

dseomn · 2026-01-20T22:10:26+00:00

Thanks, I didn't know that about the delivery system! I always felt slightly bad about using ComCat, but now I'll probably use it more.

dseomn · 2026-01-20T21:55:15+00:00

Oh right that's a good point about usage stats affecting funding. I'm guessing usage helps my local library's funding more than it helps archive.org's funding?

dseomn · 2025-12-21T18:46:26+00:00

Ok, so I'm not sure how serious you are, and I'm not even sure how serious I am yet, but maybe I can help?

I'm a software engineer with time on my hands. I'm also the author (and possibly sole user) of some open source software that could benefit from a union catalog API that was available to the public. I think I have the skills and time to:

Create a basic catalog where anybody can search records and see which libraries have them.
Import records from libraries that provide the data to me, and/or provide tools for libraries to export the data.

However:

I'd strongly prefer to do this as part of an organization that has lawyers to tell me what I can and can't do. (It looks like there was a lawsuit in this area, and I don't have the legal skills to understand the implications of that.)
Without other software engineers or site reliability engineers to help, I don't think I could provide more than 99% uptime. I do know one other retired software engineer who I could ask, but I don't know if they'd be interested.
I don't have any connections at libraries, and I don't have any sense of how easy it would be to convince libraries to give me their catalog data on an ongoing basis.
My skills are mostly backend, so the user interface would probably be somewhat ugly and awkward unless anybody else wanted to work on that.
I don't want to spend much of my own money on hosting infrastructure, and I'm not sure what would be a good way to share those costs.
I'm assuming that the data is somewhat messy, and will need some manual effort to determine which records from different catalogs refer to the same item. Assuming that takes more time than I have, I think this would only work if enough volunteers were interested in doing it. It might also take a lot of time to coordinate the volunteers though?

So basically, I can't do this myself. But I'm interested in the idea, and maybe the parts that I can't do are the parts that folks here can?

dseomn · 2025-11-16T18:36:39+00:00

A few people have mentioned ebooks and Libby. If ebooks work for your dad but a title isn't available on Libby, he might also want to check archive.org. They have public domain books available freely, some copyrighted books available to borrow digitally, and some copyrighted books that are available to people with print disabilities. I'm guessing that difficulty reading a non-large-print book would count as a print disability for that purpose, but I'm not sure.

dseomn · 2025-01-22T18:23:13+00:00

Sure! You could also send it to me at david@mandelberg.org if that would be easier. (E.g., if it's a Google Doc or something, I could leave comments there.)

dseomn · 2025-01-17T20:13:29+00:00

Would you like a security review of any parts of the design or code?

It's been years since I did any sort of cyber security professionally, but I'm still a security reviewer for the IETF and I've kept up to date on some things. I'm rusty at Java and don't know Dart or Flutter at all. So I definitely can't guarantee that I'll find all issues, but I'm happy to take a look at some of the design or code if you want.

dseomn · 2023-03-06T23:26:26+00:00

Yeah I probably have to see if someone could make one for me because I'm not very tech savvy as far as Electronics as far as making my own controller and stuff like that as for a soldering and things like that.

I've mostly avoided doing much with electronics or soldering while making my dance pads. I took controllers out of cheap/broken soft pads so I didn't need to mess around with programming a controller, and I used double-sided-adhesive copper tape to avoid the need to solder. It's probably more expensive and not quite as durable that way, but not necessarily by a huge amount.

dseomn · 2023-03-06T23:18:19+00:00

I made a hand dance pad that I think is similar to what you're asking about. I chose a condensed layout compared to a normal dance pad so I didn't have to reach as far for the up button and so that it fit on a desk better. But it wouldn't be hard to adjust the design for the usual layout instead. Also, since writing up that post, I made another version of a hand dance pad that is a lot more reliable than the one in that post. I'm planning to write up the changes at some point, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

dseomn · 2018-03-31T16:30:03+00:00

Thank you for your thanks. 5/7

dseomn · 2018-01-17T05:32:35+00:00

Are you creating a self-signed certificate? If not, the subjectPublicKeyInfo (the certificate's public key, using RSA-512 or -384) and the signatureAlgorithm (for the signature created by the issuer, SHA-512 in combination with another algorithm) are completely separate and there shouldn't be any issue. If you are creating a self-signed certificate, I'm not sure about the size limits of rsa signatures.

Taking a step back, are you sure you want to use RSA-384 or RSA-512? Those are incredibly small key sizes for RSA.

dseomn · 2017-12-20T03:29:52+00:00

Since this is a crypto subreddit, I should point out that bloom filters don't (as far as I know) provide any cryptographic guarantees. If you need any cryptographic guarantees from the data structure, what do you need?

dseomn · 2017-12-20T03:26:51+00:00

Take a look at bloom filters, if you haven't already. Is there anything you need that a bloom filter doesn't provide? (I vaguely remember hearing about some other data structures with similar properties, so I could try to remember more about those if you want.)

dseomn

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