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<h1>WorldCat Search API: Frequently Asked Questions</h1>

''Last updated 13 May 2008''


'''Why are keyword search result counts different, in the API, FirstSearch, and WorldCat.org?'''
 
There are a couple of reasons for this.  WorldCat.org includes article citation and digital materials descriptions that are not searched in the API or FirstSearch interfaces to the WorldCat database, so its results tend to be larger.  The keyword index in WorldCat.org currently has a more extensive scope than that in the API and FirstSearch.  We're looking into whether the API keyword index should be changed to match the scope of WorldCat.org.  The API and FirstSearch results tend to be closer in number, but the API result counts will often be somewhat lower because the results are organized to group items with the same authors and titles together, rather than in individual bibliographic records.
 

'''Does the relation operator "<>" work in SRU CQL queries?'''
 
It doesn't, and the SRU Explain interface has been updated to reflect this.  Not all of the CQL relations are supported.  It is still possible to use the "NOT" boolean operator with two separate indexes.  E.g., to eliminate results of the material type Books from a search for the keyword "xml":
srw.kw = "xml" NOT srw.mt = "bks"
 

'''Results sorted by Score appear in ascending order.  Could the default be descending order, to put the most relevant matches first?'''
 
Ascending order is currently the default for all sorts other than relevancy.  It's a sensible default for Author and Title, for example, but isn't for some others.  The API currently doesn't apply different default orders for different Sort keys, but that's something we can look into.  For now, a sort order can be changed to Descending by adding ",,0" to the Sort key, e.g, "Score,,0".


'''If a user is from a recognized on-campus IP address, can they be considered as a full service level API user?'''

Yes they can.  Conventional methods of authorizing users for other licensed resources, which include IP authentication, are applicable for determining which users can access the API at the full service level.

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