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Open Library

openlibrary.org

215 pointsnotpushkin44 comments

I really love open library and have volunteered with them a bit over the past few years. They have an exceptionally friendly community, there are weekly calls anyone can hop on who wants to work on an issue. Mek and company are very helpful and support people in starting all kinds of projects.

If you're at all interested in volunteering to do software work they are a great place to start. Plenty of frontend, backend, infra, and design problems that could use someone to take the lead and make it happen. :)

I use a combination of their monthly export, live API + google books API in my backend

Love + am grateful for openlib. The dumps are a game changer for me

Thank you Ray!

https://openlibrary.org/volunteer

We have community calls ever Tuesday @ 9am PT and design calls 9am PT Friday!

We're currently talking about 2023 planning and everyone's feedback is welcome.

- mek

From FAQ:

What is Open Library?

Open Library is a universal catalog for book metadata. Our goal is to create a web page for every book ever published. We call it “Open Library” because it is a collaborative open source initiative, which means that anyone can use and contribute to the Open Library catalog. In this way, Open Library opens the doors to the places where you can find the book you’re looking for.

I love Open Library (and the internet archive project in general)—I've read so many good books through them! I really hope they don't get shut down.

They're also truly open source: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/

Introducing the Open Library Explorer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25497766 - Dec 2020 (37 comments)

Importing Your Goodreads and Accessing Them with Open Library’s APIs - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25423979 - Dec 2020 (2 comments)

Open Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24457546 - Sept 2020 (1 comment)

Aaron Swartz: Announcing the Open Library - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34576 - July 2007 (25 comments)

Others?

I hadn't realised the Aaron Swartz connection to the Open Library until the past few weeks.

Makes me realise all the more how much was destroyed when the US Government sought to make an example of him.

I had been using OL for a while when looking for alternatives to goodreads. Ultimately didn’t end up sticking with it though, because taking care of two separate to-read/read lists (each on OL and GR) turned out to be too annoying, especially since OL had so many books missing and their search is subpar.

I should give them another try to, Goodreads has become worse and I got used to managing a second pair of lists (at TheStoryGraph)

Mek here with the Open Library team. In the past two years we've imported about 8 million modern books, including options to import your Goodreads books.

The community has merged 25,000 duplicate works and cleaned data for another 200k+

We also have a massive search improvement (exact edition search) slated to launch this month which is already on testing.openlibrary.org

If you decide to give it another try please let us know what you think and where we should focus our efforts to improve the experience for you!

Thanks, I will!

I love the idea. I want this to be a common thing.

I don't like the use of adobe here though. It's a closed platform. It's controlled by adobe. And unless you want to use a browser, you also need an adobe id.

I get that publishers are publishers, and they probably wouldn't approve of anything else. The Internet Archive is doing great things, and they're constantly pushing the limits. I'm thankful for it.

But I really hope the current state of the Open Library is seen as a stepping stone to something better.

Internet Archive is implementing readium LCP which is an open drm standard with many competing readers like Thorium. No adobe ID required.

From the FAQ:

If a BookReader edition is available, you can read it instantly online by clicking the "Read in Browser" link. You're done! Borrowing books in other formats will require Adobe Digital Editions or ebook software that works with Adobe authentication. You can read this FAQ entry for information on other ebook software. An Adobe.com account which you can get

I must misunderstand something then. Is it not a choice between browser and adobe id?

Readium LCP will be an alternative to adobe ADE.

Ah, so _will_ be. Thanks a lot, looking forward to it!

a bit unrelated but I am confused why library's ebook has a waiting period? I am guessing it is a licensing issue, like how many copies the library bought and are allowed to lend out? I hoped all libraries' ebook are unlimited. Is there an option for libraries to get unlimited copies of ebook from publishers? Is it just too expensive?

Also, the amount of time you can loan a book is also an deciding factor. I noticed openlibrary's lending period is in 1 hour, vs. most other libraries lend out ebook for 3 weeks. The shorter the loan period, the more on-demand it will feel. I may borrow a book for three weeks, but I will only read it for a few hours during these three weeks, so most of the time is wasted. If the moment I close the library app, the book is returned, then everyone's waiting time can be shorten to almost 0. Why don't all libraries do that?

Unsurprisingly, it’s restrictions from the publishers.

https://cheshirelibraryblog.com/2019/09/10/why-do-i-have-to-...

I was hoping this was the reincarnation of zlib.

You should be looking at the genesis of libraries, you might find the answers there :)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33675224>

Unfortunately the reading experience is so so. But hey, I’m grateful.

How can we improve the reading experience? Have you tried the Open Library Reader app? Looking forward to your advice!

Thank you!

- mek + open library

It’s been a few months, but here are some issues I had using the web reader on an iPad (didn’t realize there’s an app):

- the reading controls would overlap with the safe area/home screen navigation bar

- pinch-zooming on a page would sometimes glitch out and scroll to a different page

- the slider to change pages was too sensitive on a touchscreen, and I also kept tapping it by accident

I really like openlibrary, and it’s let me read some books I couldn’t find access to anywhere else - thanks for your work on it!

Oh, didn’t know it existed. I’ll have to download it and report back. Thanks.

Controlled Digital Lending is a fraud that helps book publishers monopolize the library culture by artificially making an abundant resource scarce. It also helps software publishers to monetize the library culture.

By now we should have already built a global repository where all digital books ever published or digitized from physical copies should have been available to anyone with internet access, just like W3C specifications.

It's a shame that we are moving in this opposite direction without realizing what lies ahead ... walls and more walls.

THERE was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall.

Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.

For anyone wondering, the parent is quoting "The Dispossessed"[0] by Ursula K. Le Guin, which is one of my all-time favorite books. Definitely read it if you like science fiction.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed

Read it even if you don't like science fiction. The science in it is much less important than the politics or anthropology; actually this is true of quite a lot of the best science fiction.

You’ll be happy to hear that the Internet Archive, who’s behind Open Library, regularly pushes the boundaries of digital lending, most recently by allowing uncontrolled digital lending during the early days of the pandemic (calling it the National Emergency Library).

Of course, this inevitably led to a lawsuit from the major publishers. In my less optimistic moments, I fear that the library will be found legally in the wrong despite its attempted justifications, and that it will lead to the demise of the entire Internet Archive.

> By now we should have already built a global repository where all digital books ever published or digitized from physical copies should have been available to anyone with internet access

The Open Library is pretty much this... for books in the public domain. AKA many more books than anyone could feasibly read in an entire lifetime, even if one only considered the "Great Classics" of Western literature. If your aim is to expand access to books, the lowest-hanging fruit by far is improving availability, findability (cataloging), reusability etc. of stuff that can be provided on any website with no legal issues whatsoever.

Yep. I appreciate how there are so many open source projects whose interests align to naturally work together at different layers toward a future of better curation:

1. Open Library providing a database of book titles, authors, and other metadata (unlike Goodreads, etc. whose databases are proprietary).

2. Internet Archive, Google Books, and Hathitrust scanning books and making full scans available for download as copyrights expire.

3. Project Gutenberg, PGDP, etc. transcribing scans and unscanned books to digital text.

4. Standard Ebooks applying a consistent style guide and providing additional cleanup and proofreading, attractive covers, and more detailed HTML and EPUB metadata.

This argument is applicable to all digital things, but for some reason it is usually only applied to books. It seems that a lot of software being free would be much more beneficial than free access to Harry Potter. I wonder if that would be as popular or, if for one reason or another, people are okay with just having voluntarily free software being free.

> This argument is applicable to all digital things, but for some reason it is usually only applied to books. It seems that a lot of software being free would be much more beneficial than free access to Harry Potter.

The problem with distributing illegal copies of software is the (depending on the crack website possibly rather small) risk of malware/ransomware, and additionally the risk that the software contains phone-home functionality to detect illegal copies (BTW: my personal opinion is that one should avoid software with such phone-home functionality (even if you obtain your copy legally) like the plague if possible).

These are, I think, plausible reasons why the software scene is more biased toward FOSS.

Great, how do writers get paid?

The problem is a great many of them now are paid next to nothing and with recent developments in the industry expected to take on more and more of the work and costs themselves as publishers cut back on promotion and editing services. And it terms of labor, publishing is an industry that stands on the backs of unpaid interns and underpaid workers (as with the recent Harper Collins strikes). Academic publishing is even worse, with authors also seeing little to nothing (and in some cases having to pay) and books costing more than $50 (and often times above $100) when many of them have also started using print on demand.

So the real question is, are writers getting paid now?

Well, a minuscule number make Stephen King money, a handful make a full-time living, and the vast majority, at most, make pocket money and have full-time work in other areas, all while the publishing industry hoovers up more and more rights.

$5.25 per month for a typical U.S. household, or an 0.1% income tax basis (say, rolled into your broadband access fee), would provide compensation equal to all current book sales, and avoid both the deadweight losses of information access denial of the present system as well as the Federal Crime of Giving People Books.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33647625>

Criminalisation of digital distribution was only legislated in 2008 (again in the U.S.):

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33643398>

Writers will get paid just like internet influencers are getting funded by fans and sponsorships. I agree it's an emerging business model, but worth giving more thought.

I know a couple authors who get paid in this fashion. They all lament how it's immensely stressful, how they can never take a vacation, and how there's always a constant fear that their revenue source will be taken out by not being able to write during stressful life events.

I agree that information should be free, but for it to be justly done, work needs to become optional for everyone.

Is pitching to publishers less precarious?

Yes, because you don't have to be "on" 24/7. An author selling to conventional media can take a vacation, because their compensation isn't drip-fed.

You may prefer this model but many people will not and it will only further the moaning and groaning about ads and sponsorships on the web. There is no model here isn't without trade-offs.

By buying their books! The books on internet archive have been purchased by or donated to the library, the same way all libraries work across the US. Books are lent using the same 1:1 owned to loaned ratios. Open library is a catalog and publicizes info about authors and promotes their works, irrespective of whether or not lendable titles are available.

- mek (open library team)

Your question... it's as though someone showed you a gallery of photos of buildings and you would ask how the architects and construction workers get paid.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, etc.

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