The article tries in several paragraphs to explain the experience of using it - I'd recommend instead just clicking on the Library Explorer link[1] yourself and actually experiencing it yourself.<p>There's something to be said for these physical-world-analogue UIs, in my opinion. Even if this is technically the same affordance as provided by old school web directory UIs, there's more of a sense of tangibility and immediacy to this kind of visual presentation, that makes it more appealing and easier to spend longer times in.<p>[1] <a href="https://openlibrary.org/explore" rel="nofollow">https://openlibrary.org/explore</a>
It never ceases to amaze and dismay me how we've built the greatest library in human history, one with intrinsic properties of unlimited readers per book, negligible distribution cost, and minimal barriers to access, and then done our best to sabotage those properties.<p>Since the typically imposed access barriers are based on copyright law, the situation could be improved somewhat by:<p>a) reforming copyright law to allow orphan works to enter the public domain, and<p>b) enabling authors to (easily) add creative commons licenses (minimally something like CC BY-NC-ND) permitting unlimited readers in digital libraries.
This is a wonderful tool and goes a long way to scratch the "library itch" I've felt since the start of the pandemic. Projects like this make me very happy that I donated to IA this year, and I'd encourage anyone else who likes them to do the same.<p>One question: are there any plans to sort fiction by author, similar to what is done in real libraries? A lot of fiction is already available in this tool, filed under DDN 8xx, but the groupings are pretty broad.
Great work @mekarpeles and team!<p>I'm working on an open source alternative to Algolia called Typesense (<a href="https://github.com/typesense/typesense" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/typesense/typesense</a>) and just this last weekend I built an Instant Search experience using the 28M Open Library books data set and Typesense:<p><a href="https://books-search.typesense.org/" rel="nofollow">https://books-search.typesense.org/</a>
I am impressed and happy to see Open Library works without Javascript. Thanks for considering the dozens of us. It's totally reasonable not to have "Explorer" work since it sounds like an application and not a document. And even in that case the links and search still show up so it falls back well.
<a href="https://openlibrary.org/explore" rel="nofollow">https://openlibrary.org/explore</a><p>Do try out the "Settings" cog at the bottom of the UI -- one thing that makes this interface so powerful is you can add custom queries to transform the entire library (such as to only show kids books, text books, or biographies on any subject).
This is visually interesting, but I can't help but feel that doesn't mimic the experience of browsing in a library. It prioritizes book covers that distract the eye (and strain it, being thumbnail-sized). I remember feeling the same way when Apple showed off skeuomorphic bookshelves on the iPad(?).<p>Are the various scanning projects (inc. The Internet Archive's own) failing to photograph spines? The screenshot of the 3D view in this post shows computer generated spines. Trying things out in the explorer, there's another "3d-spines" view that's similar (and a "spines" view that doesn't seem usable at all, but maybe that's a bug caused by browser differences).<p>The ideal interface IMO would mimic eyeballing a shelf of spines without the requirement of tilting your head 90 degrees (unless you wanted to, I guess). I'm thinking of a fullscreen interface that resembles the "3d-spines" view, but it lets you drop into a narrow focus on a single shelf, with a stack of proportionally correct scans of real spines that take the full width of the screen, with the hint of the cover in the gaps superimposed by uniformly typeset labels.
Does openlibrary.org support Z39.50 access?<p>The way the openlibrary.org site is constructed seems better than the others that came before, e.g., WorldCat. Every page is not just HTML but JSON, too. Omit the slug and add .json after the ID.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25498127" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25498127</a><p>This is without even considering the availability of bulk data dumps. A+
As cool as this is, I think it would be worth your while to look up Clay Shirky's "Ontology is overrated" if you can find it, or watch his talk <a href="https://youtu.be/ujMgQqp8YSY?t=1118" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ujMgQqp8YSY?t=1118</a>
Open Library is an incredible service, with amazing tools. I am sure that this library simulator will be very helpful to people unable to visit a library or unable to read standard print.<p>I personally have a print-related disability, known as severe convergence insufficiency. Because of this, my neuro-ophthalmologist filled out paperwork certifying that I have a print-related disability, and I have access to the National Library Service, through the US Library of Congress. Open Library gave me reciprocity through that paperwork, and I have access to, and can borrow, every single book published on OpenLibrary.org.
"Borrowing" a book just means you can view it on the clunky web reader for one hour? Other online librarians (for the lack of a better word) like Proquest lend books using the Adobe Digital Editions platform, I think that would have been a better approach.<p>Edit: So it appears OpenLibrary does lend through ADE, but this feature is not applicable for all borrowable books. Some can only be borrowed for one hour, at least in this redesign.
what I don't understand is why all these "Preview" options only show the cover, table of contents, and back cover.<p>why not show a few pages from the actual content? isn't that fair use?
But how does one navigate quickly to another Dewey number? I see only next/prior number arrows.<p>When I use the search box, or when I select Browse > Subjects and click a subject, I am suddenly in a different UI. For example if I choose Browse > Subjects > Chemistry I am looking at a single "shelf" of chem books, and the Chemistry Dewey number and its sub-numbers are no longer to be seen.