[Metadata Source Plugin] SRU - Library of Congress & GBV (ger) - updated

[davidjoseph1]

[reposted from this thread, so that it can be added to the sticky list of active plugins]
This plugin can query either the Library of Congress or the GBV (Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund - Germany) for metadata.

SRU uses Search/Retrieve via URL (SRU) and fetches the metadata in MARC format. Theoretically additional SRU sources could be added easily.

Main Features

Retrieve metadata by ISBN
Retrieve metadata by author and title
Metadata to fetch: Author, Title, Series, ISBN, Comments, Languages, Publisher, Published Date, Tags
Three categories of tags are fetched: Genre, Topic (Thesaurus), Topic (free). For each a prefix can be set in case you want to have an easy overview of where a tag came from.
Should be fast, since it only has to do one query


Note

It does not fetch covers. There might sometimes be covers, yet library catalogs are just not the best source
[DJG note: thanks to vform for the original code, SRU has been updated for Python 3.8 and works in Calibre versions 6.17 and up.]

name = 'SRU'
description = _('Downloads metadata via SRU from DNB and LOC (Search/Retrieve via URL) sources')
supported_platforms = ['windows', 'osx', 'linux']
author = 'Tobias Zeumer, updated by DJG'
version = (1, 0, 0)
minimum_calibre_version = (5, 0, 0)

History
Version 1.0.0 (2024-08-01) - updated for Python 3 and appropriate URL search destinations
Version 0.6.1 (2014-01-29)
Fix: Typo
Version 0.6 (2014-01-28)
Fix: don't check title or author if result is retrieved via ISBN
Fix: Check if author matches if result is NOT retrieved via ISBN
Fix: GBV and LOC now get a clickable link (identifier)
Fix: Reset button has a label
Tweak: Minimum results to fetch defaults to 10 (instead 1) now; otherwise results from LOC are really bad sometimes
Tweak: Search for short title (e.g. just 'Animal farm' instead of Animal farm: a fairy story')
Other: Minor fixes

Version 0.5 (2014-01-27; initial release)

Todo

Find out how to use my own relevance scoring (~thread)
I have absolutely no experience with Python, so some of the code might be not state of the art. In my tests nothing breaks it anymore, yet it isn't tested extensively. I got some ideas on what to improve, yet not that much time. So I release it as it is and hope someone finds it useful

[ARR8]

Hello, thanks for the plugin. Wanted to point out that it hasn't been added to the sticky list despite the first line of your post. I know this thread is somewhat old but the GBV functionality still works, so would be nice to have it in the catalog.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ARR8

Hello, thanks for the plugin. Wanted to point out that it hasn't been added to the sticky list despite the first line of your post. I know this thread is somewhat old but the GBV functionality still works, so would be nice to have it in the catalog.

The first post is where the Get plugins gets the current version of the PI.
The Index is NOT updated automatically. The Creator has to request that it be added (and supplies a filled in template)

Seeing the date, I suspect it is no longer 100% compatible with calibre 9.x

[PeterT]

Also the author has been AWOL for some time, so we have an abandon ware issue

[theducks]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Also the author has been AWOL for some time, so we have an abandon ware issue

The last post was Oct 2025. Not as long gone as some

[davidjoseph1]

Originally Posted by theducks

The last post was Oct 2025. Not as long gone as some

(resurrector here) I just logged in after a year, and SRU works on the Library of Congress and the GBV in calibre 9.

I have not had time to work on this recently, so I will request it be added to the sticky list.