LibraryThingThing - minor technical issue

Users of the LibraryThingThing Firefox extension will have noticed that over the last few hours it has not been popping up the familiar 'Found in X libraries' message.

A short period of head scratching soon led me to identify that the problem is being caused by one of the Web Services that it uses to identify ISBN's related to the one you are viewing on the LibraryThing page.

The xISBN web service, provided by OCLC's Office of Research, has been down for the last few hours, with any calls to it returning a server error.

This unexpected error highlights a couple of issues.

Firstly, considering that such a service is provided as an "experimental, proof of concept project" it is amazing how useful, and up to now reliable, it has been. I am sure that there are a large number of other mashup developers who have been scratching their heads around this over the last 24 hours. It proves that if something is simple, free, and useful, people will use it.

Secondly, using a Web Service there is always the possibility that sometimes it will not function. As these things transition from being research prototypes such as xISBN to production services like Amazon Web Services and our own Talis Platform APIs the chances of it happening will obviously reduce, but a developer should always be aware of of the possibility.

Which brings me to the minor personal embarrassment of admitting that the first release of LibraryThingThing fails to display something if the xISBN Web Service fails. All I can say in my defence is that LibraryThingThing is it self a research prototype demonstration mashup and as such has not passed through the rigours of production code testing that our Platform APIs have.

There will be an updated release of LibraryThingThing, in very short order, which will correct this dependency. I shall post an update to this to notify its release, and your Firefox Browser should spot the update being published.

I have no doubt that my counterparts over in Dublin, Ohio, are hard at work fixing whatever broke in xISBN, and look forward to them restoring the service we have all come to know, respect, and rely upon.