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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.

• Cook Memorial Library, in Tamworth New Hampshire (our public library development partner)


• Beyond Brown Paper, an archive of photos from the Brown Manufacturing Company in northern New Hampshire


• Lamson Library, of Plymouth State University

Related Reading





• Unsucking The OPAC


• Library 2.0 In The Real World


• WPopac: An OPAC 2.0 Testbed

Keyword Wildcards

When a Keyword Search is done, the Catalog looks for exact matches of search
words. Keyword Wildcards may be used in the search box to broaden search
results or eliminate the need for multiple searches. This wildcards may be used
in a keyword Search and in an Advanced Keyword Search.

? - The question mark replaces a single character.

For Example:

wom?n may find women or woman

$ - The dollar sign represents
any number of characters.

For Example:

cook$ may find cook, cooks, cookery or cooking

AU

Author

au marzollo and au wick

ti venus and au grey

ti venus and (gr?y)

su rutabaga or su turnip$

rutabaga or (turnip)

au gray and ti
planet not ti venus

gray and (planet) not ti venus

Keyword

Proximity Operator

W#

<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]-->

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Why are some titles bolded?

If the Library you selected when
you began your catalog session owns copies of a particular title, that title
will display in bold text and be preceded by 2
asterisks (**). This is referred to as "Highlighting."
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