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Comment by rg111 | Hacker News Reader

I have been using the Open Library app for almost a year now. I am very satisfied with it.

After GR removed the ability to add books manually by users and added stringent rules for them to be added to consideration by "librarians", I stopped using GR.

I read a lot of obscure books that often don't have ISBN or an webpage (!). I can't track them or add them! It was so unfair.

So, I moved to OpenLibrary and have been using it ever since.

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That's awesome. May I ask, for pre-ISBN books, do you typically look up books by title? What do you do with books when you find them? What is your primary use case / reason? Is it as a reference library (of things to read)? Keeping track of reading?

Yes, by title. And I often find out about them from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. I also find out about a great deal of books from other books, either mentioned or cited/referred to.

I read some books cover to cover, and some are kept as references. Books are mainly on Math, Philosophy, and History. There are other topics, too.

I read in 4 languages and GR is very Anglo-centric. That's another issue.

I wanted to track my to-read and read for every book that I found.

I cannot do that with GR anymore.

(I am unsure to whether you are asking about my use case about the sites or the books. So I answered both.)

very helpful, thank you. Good to learn international use case is working okay for you (I know we can improve). If you're not on our slack already, feel free to email me @ <mek@archive.org> -- you're welcome to ask questions and weigh so we can continue to try to move in the right direction for you and others.

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