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Comment by activatedgeek | Hacker News Reader

Since the past few months I have been searching for a Goodreads alternative. Something that only keeps my books. I don't care about the social features that much. And I think this is it. I am going to donate a tiny bit right away!

Although, I just tried importing my Goodreads export into Open Library and I get the following "Internal Error":

> Hmm... > Sorry. There seems to be a problem with what you were just looking at. > We've noted the error xxxx-xx-xx/yyyyyy and will look into it as soon as possible. Head for home?

Anyone else facing this issue?

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Hi! I work on Open Library; sorry for the issue! We recently had a big python 3 migration. Chris/Aaron just fixed + tested it, and I just deployed it to production, so it should be working now!

https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/pull/4259

Appreciate it!

I can confirm it works with at least my import.

Edit: Alas, some errors regarding "Book not in collection" and "No ISBN". But I think I can probably see if there is a way to contribute those books to the repository.

Even opening an issue for this would be a massive help:

https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/new/ch...

The importer is a new project (as of August this year) and I think there's a lot of opportunity for improving it (including importing missing records on demand).

Other hat tips: I also want to call out the great work of https://inventaire.io, another great project in the space which uses wikidata, as they also have a goodreads import which we're learning from. Another project I'm excited about (which has goodreads import) is beta.thestorygraph.com. Not sure the status of its source code but I heard an interview from the founder and she and her work so far seems great.

As one can for example add Audible podcasts as books in GR I can imagine this leading to importer errors as well as they necessarily don't need to have an ISBN.

This is right.

Books pre ~1973 don't have ISBN. And goodreads covers far more material than just modern material.

The current Goodreads importer makes a big/unfortunate tradeoff of trying to have something which works for the majority of material on people's goodreads lists.

It doesn't preclude further efforts -- Open Library knows about millions of books that don't have ISBN. So if anyone wants to help us improve our importer (or at least register their interest by creating an issue which calls out what other identifiers should be considered -- e.g. LOC, etc) that would be very helpful.

# To open an issue:

https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/new/ch...

# Here's the code for the importer

https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/blob/892adebb...

Thanks a lot. I learned something today. I knew of the ISBN issue, but didn't think of it.

Having some free time on my hands I will take a look in the next few days. Looking for an alternative to GR and for something that tickles my interests.

Python, Search and literature. And open source.

You might specifically appreciate that every page on Open Library is an API (including search). Just add ".json"

e.g.

https://openlibrary.org/search.json?q=

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL28018730M.json

This is one of the best implementation decisions that Aaron Swartz, Anand Chitipothu, et al made when starting Open Library.

Have you tried Library Thing?

https://www.librarything.com/

Adding your data to yet another proprietary archive doesn’t sound like much of a solution..

I don't think I am particularly worried about a proprietary solution. If I am putting my preferences in the public, pretty sure I am giving up on some dimension of privacy. With books at least, it doesn't seem so concerning as long as the recommendations don't suck too much (I don't particularly rely on recommendations that much though). But of course, you never know!

You do realize this entire post here is about GoodReads discontinuing their API? And as a reaction to that, you’re suggesting moving to another provider that doesn’t allow exporting your data either.

LibraryThing has several robust export options and an API. As they also run small "actual" libraries that includes some interesting old catalog formats as well.

Not sure if you've used the APIs recently, but they have been disabled without warning since October: "Our APIs are indeed disabled for now. They will be re-enabled at some point but we don't have an immediate timeline for it, so I wouldn't expect them back anytime soon." [0]

[0] https://www.librarything.com/topic/325722

You might wish to review their Privacy policy, which inspires more confidence than Goodreads:

https://www.librarything.com/privacy

The site's also been around since 2005, so, that speaks well to both its longevity and its integrity. Of course, that's not to say they couldn't be acquired tomorrow and paywalled, but I think it unlikely.

Just tried this out. Quite a large community, so I'm assuming it is a well fed machinery. The interface is outdated. Nevertheless, the website does its job quite well. I am happy I found this. Thanks!

...And they even have an API!

I recently "kondoed" my books down to like ~2xx total volumes and once I had them all organized it only took me an hour or so to scan all of them into the LT iOS app. Very few wouldn't scan but those were mostly findable by manually searching. Having an up to date list of all my books is pretty satisfying and LT seems to have a decent reputation in the serious-about-books-online community. Even inspired me to schlep into the office to catalogue my work related collection.

Made me realize how many booksellers(especially used) put proprietary barcode stickers on top of the 'actual' barcode stickers.

LT is in the slow process of upgrading the interface to something newer/modern and especially with better mobile device support. The screenshots on their blog I've seen look like it is coming along nicely, and as a long time LT user I appreciate that they take their time on big changes like that.

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