WorldCat is now permanently redirecting straightforward, hackable identifier-based URIs, to new, absurdly long canonical URIs . This means that a link to something like:
now becomes:
http://www.worldcat.org/title/marley-me-life-and-love-with-the-worlds-worst-dog/oclc/58431841
Besides being longer and uglier, the new canonical URI forces a loss in semantic precision. It’s no longer sensible for me to reference multiple editions of the same work on WorldCat; every ISBN link leads to the same page. This is not progress.
(Ironically, I actually wrote a trivial Greasemonkey userscript that did exactly what I just complained about: redirecting from ISBN-based URIs automatically. The difference being, of course, that a userscript is optional. Only a few dozen people in the world ever used it; I myself kept it turned off much of the time,)
I know my Free Software bias is showing, but I can’t help but be cynical about the thought process here. (Hey, Amazon has really ugly default URIs for books that are tied to a proprietary identifier; we should do the same thing, only ours should be longer and even more arbitrary! Then they have to use our API to do anything useful!
) At least Amazon allows the user to use the shorter URIs if they choose, which makes things like Gina Trapani’s userscript possible—and invaluable.
I first became interested in using links to WorldCat precisely to avoid Amazon’s ugly URIs and refusal to use modern 13-digit ISBNs. I thought a library-oriented nonprofit would be a better choice. Unfortunately, subsequent events have proved this not to be the case. At this point, if I’m going to end up with non-ISBN links, I might as well focus on using and improving LibraryThing‘s data whenever possible, rather than encouraging Amazon or WorldCat to strengthen their respective near-monopoly positions. So, http://www.librarything.com/isbn/9780060817084
it is, then.