If the Joliet format does this the same way that a DOS partition does it, then there's an entry in the root directory with the "V"olume Label flag set. It sounds like you need either a direct interface (below the filesystem level) to the CD-ROM, or a raw read of the root directory of the CD-ROM. I would suggest opening /dev/cdrom for read and dumping the result to screen. Hopefully this will get you things like the table of contents and maybe the root directory. Try it on lots of different CDs to make sure you have a handle on the data format. Play and Learn.