This task involves the work of evaluating the WorldCat Search API v2 [i] through the lens of the benefits it could offer to volunteers editing Wikimedia projects.

This evaluation is one input [of many] into more broadly deciding whether we will prioritize migrating to the WorldCat Search API v2 within the next 6 months.

Decision(s) to be made

1. Will the Editing Team prioritize migrating to the WorldCat Search API v2 [i] in the next 6 months?

Open questions

This section contains the open questions we think answering will equip us with the information we need to make the decision(s) named above...

• 1. What functionality has migrating to Zotero to fulfill ISBN citation requests (T336727, T336297) left volunteers without or with a more difficult time accessing?
  • We have no full text or title citation for the vast majority of books, only for academic papers.
  • Poor coverage of books published in Asia and Africa for ISBN search.
• 2. How does the impact(s) "1." asks us to name vary among different groups of people? E.g. might volunteers from Sub-Saharan Africa be impacted differently than volunteers editing from within North America? If so, how?
  • Medium sized wikis for which no national translator exists are most affected. Small wikis often don't have citoid enabled.

• 3. What work would be required of the Editing Team to migrate to the WorldCat Search API v2?
  • Dependant on implementation requirements.
• 4. What – if any – work would be required of volunteers to migrate to the WorldCat Search API v2?
  • Likely N/A
• 5. How often have people been using/attempting to use the functionality the WorldCat Search API v2 delivers? Ideally, this data can be split by platform, wiki, and request origin (e.g. third-party vs. on-wiki usage) and viewed over time (e.g. past two years).
  • This grafana chart offers some insight (thank you, @Mvolz). Tho, answering this question fully might require further analysis and/or the implementation of new instrumentation cc @MNeisler.
  • TODO: Check logs for how many of the requested ISBNs return no data, compared to total # of requests.

Background/References

• T336297: Decommission ISBN requests via WorldCat
• en:Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Automatic citations based on ISBN are broken
• en:Wikipedia_talk:RefToolbar#ISBN_autofill_broken

Done

• Answers to all "Open questions" are documented on this task

i. https://developer.api.oclc.org/wcv2#/Bibliographic%20Resources/search-brief-bibs