This link has been bookmarked by 11 people . It was first bookmarked on 10 Aug 2007, by Kent Sin.
-
26 Jun 08
Wisely"Open Library is a new online tool for finding information about books – even (perhaps especially) for titles that are out-of-print, scarce, or likely to find one reader per decade, if even that. It is, so to speak, a catalog with benefits. If a text is available in digital format, there is a link. you to it."
-
The basic framework is being established by my appallingly accomplished young friend Aaron Swartz — who, at the age of 21, has already helped create RSS (that was in his early teens), published a couple of computer-science papers, and developed Infogami, a system enabling his digitally clueless elders to set up their own websites.He studied sociology as an undergraduate at Stanford University, presumably in his spare time. Aaron has written an essay called “How to Be More Productive” that can be recommended on the grounds that the author does know something on the subject.
-
Q: How is Open Library funded? Are you working on it full time? And how many people are involved in the project?
A: It’s currently being funded by the Internet Archive, with the help of some state and federal library grants. We have some volunteers, but also about 5 people working full-time (a couple programmers, a designer, and a product manager).
-
Q: Some serious questions have come up about the shrinking depth of subject cataloging from the book records issued by the Library of Congress. That might sound like a problem just for librarians, but it isn’t. It’s basic infrastructure for intellectual life, pretty much. To anyone doing research, having books adequately cataloged by subject offers tremendous benefits. Will Open Library be taking up the slack on this?
A: Yes, it’s amazing the amount of politics around Library of Congress Subject Headings. (And I had no idea that they were thinking about abandoning them — that’s incredible; thanks for the pointer.) Lots of people have different opinions over how things should be characterized and cataloged and which things were important. When we first started the project, librarians kept arguing about which system we should use.
We decided early on to not be partisan but to be a clearinghouse for all the cataloging data we could get our hands on. So in areas where the Library of Congress doesn’t do the cataloging, or doesn’t do the cataloging to your taste, we’ll try to make that data available.
We’re hoping we’ll be able to pull series data from the specialized libraries so that you can view them on our web site. We’ll also republish them so that other libraries can import them from us.
-
Q: Open Library will also serve as a central directory for books available in digital formats. Some such material is freely available to everyone (e.g., the Project Guttenberg editions). And some of it has more limited access. Will you link to the latter? And do you have a policy or opinion about dealing with Google Books?
A: Yes, we hope to link to everything interesting — free or not, although obviously we prefer free and can do more with it. We’re planning to link to Google Books and we’re hoping we can get copies of their public domain books.
-
-
28 Mar 08
-
15 Aug 07
-
11 Aug 07
-
10 Aug 07
-
09 Aug 07
-
08 Aug 07
-
SJLibrary Learning"Imagine if world's most complete card catalog were just a mouse-click away. Scott McLemee chats with a young programmer who is making it happen."
catalog future OPAC library2.0 metadata Web2.0 libraries library
Would you like to comment?
Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.