Umlaut and Amazon

[Jonathan Rochkind]

I am curious if anyone else is using the Amazon adapter?

Umlaut has historically gotten various information and service
availability from Amazon, including:

* enhanced bibliographic metadata (look up an ISBN, get back
author/title/etc)
* Cover images
* Summary/description information on books
* Identification of when preview/search-inside-the book is available
from Amazon, and link directly to it when it is.

However, Amazon has made it increasingly hard to do this, with both
their Terms Of Service on what API's they have, and with technological
changes that have made it not possible for Umlaut to get everything it
wants.

I've tried to work around it for years, but with recent tech changes on
Amazon's end, it seems like it's not possible anymore for Umlaut to
determine preview/search-inside-the-book availability from Amazon. Which
is too bad, because that was super useful.

I think I am going to take Amazon out of the suggested services in
Umlaut 4.0 -- although the adapter will still be there, it's already
not working well for preview/search-inside discovery.

Fortunately, we can get all of those things from Google Books API too,
which is still supported and working properly. In my suggested Umlaut
setup, I'm going to have GoogleBookSearch coming earlier in the service
priorities, so it can immediately expand ISBN's to full bibliographic
metadata when needed.

Google Book Search also provides previews and search-inside-the-book,
and Umlaut's adapter discovers those. It was nice to have Umlaut looking
at both Amazon and Google -- each service has content the other does not
have. But seems to be no longer possible.

It would still be possible to have Umlaut generate simply a link to the
Amazon page, where the user can discover for themselves if
preview/search-inside is available. Although even this requires using an
Amazon API with questionable terms of service.

jonathan

[PHILLIPS M.E.]

> I am curious if anyone else is using the Amazon adapter?

We were interested in doing so but I don't think we had an API key and I was put off by the terms. It's a shame in terms of what we can offer the users, but I think you've taken the right decision.

Matthew

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Matthew Phillips
Head of Digital and Bibliographic Services,
Durham University Library, Stockton Road, Durham, DH1 3LY
+44 (0)191 334 2941

[Scot Thomas Dalton]

We use the Amazon adapter. It has been useful and I'm sad to see it go, but if the terms are off-putting then I agree that it should not be part of the recommended setup.

All the best,
Scot

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Scot Dalton
New York University