An IMDb for Books

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Posted by Hemos on Friday March 7, 2003 @04:50AM from the reading-the-world dept.

darkgray writes "After years of reading books and never really knowing which books were, perhaps, the best out there, and in the meantime getting more and more impressed by sites like the Internet Movie Database, I decided to start a project of my own. I named it the Internet Book List, and now it needs people to vote on books they've read, and even more it needs dedicated people to submit books and author information. Help out Humanity: Add a Book!"

8 of 388 comments (clear)

Looks like a good start. by SN74S181 · 2003-03-07 04:57 · Score: 1, Funny

It looks like the site has a good start. One problem, though. The list of 'most popular' books reads like a reading list from the comic-bookstore-guy fan association. All that genre fiction: the Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, Tolkein. Ayn Rand! One worries how soon Elron the Hubbard will appear. That's all subcult stuff. Hopefully as the site grows a more mainstream focus will take hold.
Re:Copyrights by LoudMusic · 2003-03-07 04:57 · Score: 2, Funny

Have you already considered the legal ramifications for what you're doing?

It's a sterling idea, it's just that some publishers might get aggrieved when they see information on their publications being held by a third party.
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Re:What About Amazon? by Regulus · 2003-03-07 05:12 · Score: 2, Funny

What you should do is write a spyder-bot that crawls through Amazon.com's site, and collect a huge amount of book information. If you can do it surreptitiously enough, you might not get sued :-D

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Re:What About Amazon? by daeley · 2003-03-07 05:12 · Score: 1, Funny

I *hated* Hitch Hiker's Guide and I really don't care for Tolkien.

Wow! That's a pretty brave thing to say on this site. ;)

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Business Plan??? by cosmosis · 2003-03-07 05:13 · Score: 3, Funny

I think this Book List is a fabulous idea and I support it 100%. My only concern is something of this magnitude will require a business plan of some sort. Already the server appears to be having problems handing the slashdotting effect. If this project hopes to achieve its true potential its going to need a lot of bandwith and storage capacity, in addition to a lot of open-sourced people power and coordination. At the very least I would expect it would require some people to manage it full-time, who will need monetary compensation for doing so.

Do you have a business plan that will anticipate and manage this growth. I hope so.

Best of luck and success to you.

Planet P Blog

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Re:How far back are we talking? by Cruciform · 2003-03-07 05:36 · Score: 3, Funny

I'm still looking for the "Bugger all this for a lark" version of the bible mentioned here. :)
Re:A Great Idea by Shadow+Wrought · 2003-03-07 05:42 · Score: 2, Funny

That's pretty cool, although I do admit to chuckling at the thought of "rating" a clay tablet from Sumeria (and yes I know that's not how it works but my mind sometimes makes leaps without necessary asking my consent;-)
The average review for this tablet is 8.7 out of 10...

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Re:Um...I thought this was called..... by 1_brown_mouse · 2003-03-07 05:42 · Score: 2, Funny

try http://catalog.loc.gov