dlc_authority_fetcher

Given a file of headings, it will return matching MARC authorities from Library of Congress

Dependencies

Requires Python 2.X. It relies on the opensearch library, which does not yet support Python 3.

You can install the opensearch and pymarc libraries with pip install opensearch pymarc

Running the script

Your file should be formatted like so:

Moran, Peggy, 1960-
Golden retriever
Dogs
Our best friends

Run the script by calling python fetch_authorities.py list_of_headings_to_search, where list_of_headings_to_search is a file formatted as in the example above.

By default, it should append all downloaded authority records to a file called authorities_to_load.mrc. You can change this with the -o or --output flag. For example, you could run python fetch_authorities.py -o records.mrc list_of_headings_to_search if you want the authority records to go into a file called records.mrc.

There are several options regarding searching specific thesauri, etc. You can get a complete list of options by running python fetch_authorities.py -h

Restrictions

By default, this script waits 10 seconds between each request (the Library of Congress "recommends that software programs submit a total of no more than 10 requests per minute").

For this reason, it is strongly recommended that you only run one instance of this script at once.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Josh Stompro for all your help with the specifics of id.loc.gov searching!