An IMDb for Books

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!"

Comments

What About Amazon?

[n3rd]

There's always Amazon.com. They have reader reviews as well as a rating system for each book. I personally use it due to the large amount of traffic they have so I can see a wide range of opinions on a product.

They may not have everything, but they're pretty close.

Re:What About Amazon?

[joshsisk]

If Amazon decides not to carry the book, *poof* it ceases to exist if we rely on it as a means of archiving records of books.

Well, no. There are lots of books on there that they don't carry. In fact, there are lots of books on there that they have NEVER carried.

The do this because they will send a request to a rare book dealer for you and then take a commission from the sale if the dealer can find it for you.

That said, I think a non-commercial DB is better...

Re:What About Amazon?

[Nept]

Amazon doesn't even come close to having everything. If you want everything go to the Advanced Book Exchange online. Thousands of independent booksellers all over the world. That's everything my friend.

Re:What About Amazon?

[b!arg]

You do realize that IMDB.com is run by Amazon, don't you?

Re:What About Amazon?

[HBergeron]

IMDB was originally started by some english blokes as a free universal database project much like the original cddb and the like. You can see its' origins in some of the odd bits of information - they'll often have finnish or irish box office figures for an obscure movie but not U.S.. In my opinion those boys did one hell of a job setting it up. A few years back they sold out to Amazon for a (rumoured) $100M, not a bad chunk of change. Amazon has linked dvd sales to the site be seems to otherwise have left it to it's own devices. The greater clunkiness of the site these days owes more to the business folks who are running the site for amazon who seem to be trying to turn it into another Daily Variety.

Re:Totally Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean a Site like this:
http://www.eigenspace.net/reality/
Which has been around for quite some time....

There is already a good one.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.alexlit.com It's a little SF heavy, but it has a great rating systems and has been operating for a number of years. Check it out before you start a whole new project.

BookCrossing

[ciurana]

For what is worth, there is a similar effort out there called Book Crossing. Essentially, you put books in circulation by leaving them in cafés or other public places, for people to find and comment on. I put a couple of books (my most recent one today!) out. Anyway, this creates a virtual roaming library that now has global reach.

Check out their web site; Book Crossing has some neat ideas that could be applied to this project.

Cheers!

E

Here is how

[Majere]

Under the help section:

5. How do I help out with the project?
We'd love to get more people to help out with adding books and authors, so mail us at submission@iblist.com asking to become an administrator. We will contact you as soon as we can.

The Assayer already online book information source

[Brad Lucier]

Check out "The Assayer" for online book information.

All Consuming

[evand]

While the Internet Book List looks like it might eventually become a worthwhile alternative data source to Amazon.com, I've been using All Consuming for a little while and find it to be an exceedingly useful resource for book information.

While it does use Amazon data (the merits of which are discussed in other replies to this article), All Consuming provides a clean interface and metainformation to the base data, as well as nifty features like weblog scanning (to find mentions of books), the ability to track a book collection, and a "friends" network that keeps one up-to-date with other members' various literary excursions.

As I put it on my weblog: "If you read, join All Consuming."

Science Fiction Already Has Two Sites Like This

[Nova Express]

Science Fiction already has two sites (though not with rankings) with tens of thousands of book and story titles already listed. They are:

The Locus Index; and

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

The Locus database covers SF/F/H/etc. from 1984 on fairly comprehensively, while the ISFDB covers a wider timeframe, but isn't (yet) nearly as comprehensive. ISFDB was also suffering under some badwidth caps earlier in the year, but expects their problems to be solved (via hosting through the Texas A&M library system) very shortly. Both are well worth bookmarking and using.