Index Data  >  Open Content  >  Access using SRU

This page describes how to provide access to the open access resources using SRU.

Server Address

The server is located at opencontent.indexdata.com, port 80. The available database names are provided on the preceding page.

SRU is Easy

Here's a very simple SRU request that searches Wikipedia for 'z39.50', and returns one record:

http://opencontent.indexdata.com/wikipedia?version=1.1&
operation=searchRetrieve&query=z39.50&maximumRecords=1

Click on the link to see how results are structured. For many more examples, please see SRU is Simple!

Searchable Headings

Each database supports slightly different indexes, but generally, the DublinCore elements that are present in response records can also be searched. if you find problems,. or searches that don't work like you expect, please contact us or join the mailing list .

Other Attributes

All databases support right truncation, as well as regular expression searches. Phrase searching is supported on all fields. Complete subfield searching is supported on the title and author fields (where available). You can attach the relation modifier 'relevant' to any search term to ask for results in relevance-ranked order. To ensure that all terms are included in the relevance score when performing a boolean search, be sure to attach the relevance attribute to every search term.

Retrieval

All databases support retrieval in the record schemas 'dc' (default), and 'marcxml'. Note that the quality and extent of the records vary -- very different cataloging practices have been used across these resources. We have made some effort to normalize things, but ultimately, you will need to look at the data that comes back from each system, if you want to make the best possible use of the servers.

Questions?

If you have questions or comments about this service, please contact us, or oin the mailing list.