README.md

etextbooksearch

Lovingly forked and heavily based upon https://github.com/myqua/etextbooksearch

All scripts built for Python 3.x.

Sources

Formatting is more about compatibility with the current system, not optimization. Found ISBNs are sorted and hashed into a hashes/ directory.

Folder	Input description	Format
CatalogFiles/	All ebook and physical books currently in the collection	Any plain text format. We use a plain list of ISBNs.
PublisherFiles/	"All" available ebooks	Either Excel or any plain text format. ISBNs are discovered automatically, regardless of layout.
BookstoreFiles/	All books required for courses this semester	JSON array of book objects (format below)

{
  "title": "The Bride of the Tomb",
  "isbn": "9781486484157",
  "price": 18.83,
  "classes": [
    {
      "code": "ENG 404",
      "prof": "MILLER, Alex. McVeigh" // Name format doesn't matter
    }
  ]
}

Scripts

findEtextbooks.py

Takes all of your input files and outputs comparison files.

• Hashes ISBNs to a 'hashes/' folder.
• Expands all ISBNs from BookstoreFiles/ using the WorldCat api
  • saved in expanded-hash
  • map-hash stores the ISBN and its results on separate lines for comparison later
• Expands ISBN with metadata from WorldCat

Filename	Description
do-not-have.csv	All the ISBNs that were in expanded BookstoreFiles/ and PublisherFiles/, but not CatalogFiles/.
have-underdrm.csv	All the ISBNs that were in expanded BookstoreFiles/ and CatalogFiles/, but not PublisherFiles/.
have-drmfree.csv	ISBNs that were in all three.

bookstoreExpand.py

Only does the WorldCat ISBN expansion, always overwriting the appropriate expanded-hash cache file.

attachPricesSources.py

Adds price, source, and class information to the three comparison files. Creates csv's with isbn,price,source,metdata, and classes info (in that order). Naming convention is {source file name}-prices.csv.