[AlPe]

Alright, but you still need to parse the resulting XML string to extract the value.

Anyway, just my two cents.

I am currently using:

    def get_meta(self, meta, default=""):
        value = default
        try:
            import lxml.etree as etree
            opf = self.bk.get_opf().encode("utf-8")
            root = etree.fromstring(opf)
            query = "//dc:%s" % (meta)
            namespaces = {"dc": "http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"}
            dc_elem = root.xpath(query, namespaces=namespaces)
            if len(dc_elem) > 0:
                value = dc_elem[0].text
        except:
            pass
        return value