Retrieve a bibliographic record by OCLC number via the WorldCat Metadata API
domain: developer.api.oclc.org · 4 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Obtain a WSKey backed by a WorldCat Cataloging/Metadata subscription and request an OAuth2 access token
Send GET /bibs/{oclcNumber} with the bearer token to retrieve the record, defaulting to JSON
Set the Accept header to request MARCXML if the legacy XML serialization is needed instead
Parse the returned bibliographic data for the fields required
Known gotchas
WorldCat Metadata API 2.0 changed the default response format to JSON; integrations built against the legacy XML-only API must be updated to request MARCXML explicitly
Writing or updating bib/holdings records requires a higher-tier Cataloging subscription than read-only Metadata API access
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