Books · head-to-head
British National Bibliography vs Wizard World
The British National Bibliography is the British Library's record of everything published in the UK and Ireland since 1950, now published as BIBFRAME/RDA linked open data through the multi-national "Share Family" platform. Its original bnb.data.bl.uk endpoint has been offline since the Library's October 2023 cyber-attack destroyed its digital infrastructure; the catalog has since resurfaced on a beta institutional search portal, per the Library's own service-status and metadata-services pages.
A community-run REST API mirroring the Harry Potter Wiki: houses (with founders, ghosts, and heads), wizards, spells, elixirs, ingredients, and magical creatures, each returned as detailed JSON. Built and maintained by a small volunteer team (MossPiglets) on .NET/ASP.NET Core with a public Swagger spec, hosted free on Heroku with no key, account, or documented rate limit beyond the dyno's own capacity.
| British National Bibliography | Wizard World | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | None |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | RDF, HTML | JSON |
| CORS | unknown | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
Wizard World supports CORS, while British National Bibliography doesn't — pick Wizard World for direct browser calls.