I can't attend to the event but wanted to share this tool https://github.com/dlindem/zotwb a friend maintains and uses to import bibliography from Zotero to a Wikibase instance, like this case: https://tinyurl.com/22alvzsh

Hope it helps.

Thank you, @Olea! Reach out to us afterwards during the hackathon if you'd like to discuss this topic further :)

IMHO there is previous work at https://github.com/rdmpage/wikidata-bibliographic-data

📚 Public ISBN Databases

• 1. ✅ 1. ISBN International Agency
• Free basic search for ISBNs and publishers
• Focused on publisher records, not a full book database
• No bulk download or API access for complete data

• 1. ✅ 2. WorldCat (OCLC)
• Huge bibliographic catalog used by libraries globally
• Many books indexed by ISBN
• Limited public APIs (registration required)
• Not fully open data

• 1. ✅ 3. Open Library (by Internet Archive)
• Millions of books with ISBNs, metadata, and covers
• Fully open source and open data
• Bulk data dumps available: [https://openlibrary.org/developers/dumps](https://openlibrary.org/developers/dumps)
• API: [https://openlibrary.org/developers/api](https://openlibrary.org/developers/api)
• GitHub: internetarchive/openlibrary

• 1. ✅ 4. Google Books
• Powerful ISBN search
• API available: [https://developers.google.com/books](https://developers.google.com/books)
• Subject to usage restrictions and licensing limits

• 1. ✅ 5. LibraryThing / Goodreads
• Contain ISBN metadata
• No open bulk access; APIs limited or commercial (Goodreads is owned by Amazon)

• 1. ⚠️ Not Public
• Bowker (US): ISBN lookup service, full data is commercial
• Nielsen (UK): Commercial ISBN database provider

Query for ISBN items available in wikidata https://w.wiki/Dywk - currently around 3 million

For those who attended the session and/or are interested in this, please follow the conversation at task T371264, which is about development of the tool itself.

I also invite folks to create issues/feature requests in the project repository's issue tracker. I've already added a bunch: https://github.com/waldyrious/bookform/issues

Consider these standards:

• IFLA LRM https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q54410458
• IFLA FRBR https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16388
• BIBFRAME https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q17050075

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Commons category: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Hackathon_2025_-_Discuss_initial_strategies_for_a_visual_interface_to_insert_books_into_Wikidata