Open Library
 Screenshot (May 2010) |
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| URL | openlibrary.org |
|---|---|
| Slogan | One web page for every book. |
| Commercial? | no |
| Type of site | Digital library index |
| Registration | free |
| Available language(s) | English |
| Created by | Aaron Swartz |
| Launched | 2006 |
| Alexa rank |  6,735 (April 2011[update])[1] |
| Revenue | donation |
| Current status | working |
Open Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.
Open Library began in 2006 with Aaron Swartz as the original engineer and leader of Open Library's technical team.[2][3] The project is now led by George Oates.[4]
Contents |
[edit] Book database
Its book information is collected from the Library of Congress, other libraries, and Amazon.com, as well as from user contributions through a Wiki-like interface. If books are available in digital form, a button labeled "Read" appears next to its catalog listing. Links to where books can be purchased or borrowed are also provided.
There are different entities in the database:
- authors
- works (which are the aggregate of all books with the same title and text)
- editions (which are different publications of the corresponding works)
Open Library claims to have 6 million authors and 20 million books (not works), and about one million Public Domain books are available as digitized books[5].
[edit] Technical
The site was redesigned and relaunched in May 2010. Its codebase is on GitHub. The site uses Infobase, its own database framework based on PostgreSQL, and Infogami, its own Wiki engine written in Python.[6] The source code to the site is published under the Affero General Public License, version 3.[7][8]
[edit] See also
- Online Computer Library Center - creator of WorldCat
- LibraryThing
- Google Book Search
- Amazon.com
- OPAC
[edit] References
- ^ "Openlibrary.org Site Info from Alexa". http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/openlibrary.org. Retrieved 2011-04-17.
- ^ "A library bigger than any building". BBC News. 2007-07-31. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6924022.stm. Retrieved 2010-07-06.
- ^ Grossman, Wendy M (2009-01-22). "Why you can't find a library book in your search engine". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jan/22/library-search-engines-books. Retrieved 2010-07-06.
- ^ George (Open Library)
- ^ About Us (Open Library)
- ^ About the Technology (Open Library)
- ^ Developers / Licensing (Open Library)
- ^ LICENSE at master from openlibrary's openlibrary - GitHub
