Something cool - Amazon to MARC and IMDb to MARC

The Amazon to MARC converter takes information from Amazon.com book records and turns it into MARC. I don't see myself using the MARC records this produces, because the records would take so much cleanup that it might actually be easier to start from scratch, but I still think it's pretty cool. Plus, some aspects could be useful for my work: I could copy and paste summary information from here and avoid (I'm pretty sure) having to hunt down quotation marks and apostrophes that Connexion doesn't like, and I could potentially use this as a starting place for call numbers and subject headings.

The IMDb to MARC converter (prototype) takes information from IMDb and turns it into MARC records. I think this converter's output is actually even more helpful than the Amazon to MARC converter's - video recording MARC records take a lot of work, because of all the name access points and various notes. This would take care of some of that work, although there'd still be a lot of fixing and fiddling to do. I love the "verify names" feature (also present in the Amazon to MARC converter). I could see this tool being especially popular with libraries that, in order to save time, have a policy of basing video recording cataloging on container information - this would probably help them save even more time. Again, as with the Amazon to MARC converter, I probably wouldn't use the MARC records produced by the IMDb to MARC converter, but there are still certain things I could copy and paste into the records I end up using in Connexion.

UPDATE: The Amazon to MARC converter doesn't just do book records - I just had it generate a record for a DVD, VHS, and CD. The "classify" information seems to be drawn from OCLC - too bad, I was hoping it could help Tracy and Trudy in those cases where they have trouble finding OCLC records that match the Contemporary World Music records they're assigning call numbers to.

Nifty things online

Here's a few nifty things I've learned about recently:

• Odiogo - When you sign up for Odiogo, your posts become listenable as well as readable. I found out about this over at Catalogablog - try listening to one of the posts over there. I'd like to sign up for that sometime soon. I think I'll probably sign my other blog up, since most of the posts there are really long.
• Omeka - A free and open source product for putting up online exhibitions. Yet another one I'd like to look over. I don't think I, personally, would ever need to use it, but the library might be able to use it for something. We could do exhibits of our Texas history stuff, special collections, etc.
• OCLC Classify - Ok, this is something I've known about for a while, but I don't think I've written about it yet. This can, at times, be very helpful when I need to decide between multiple possible call numbers for an item. I can see how many libraries have used one versus the other(s). Right now, it's still experimental - I wonder if OCLC plans on charging for access to this once it's no longer experimental? I hope not.
• OCLC xISSN History Visualization Tool - This is pretty cool. You can search a particular ISSN, and it will give you a visual representation of that title's history (as long as the ISSNs for each of the various incarnations the title has gone through are available to the tool). I haven't had much luck with the ISSNs I've hunted down and tried out - the best way to be sure to see what this tool is capable of is to try one of the ISSN sample links. You get a visual representation of preceding ISSNs, your requested ISSN, succeeding ISSNs, and which of these are print, online, microform, or CD-ROM.