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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!"
Fiction, Nonfiction, both?
What about textbooks? Do we want those too?
How about programming books? Manuals? At what stage of public availability do we want to consider? If it's on a shelf at Barnes & Noble that's one thing, but are we talking Congressional Review here?
Suggest some boundaries!
Schnapple
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.
> They may not have everything, but they're pretty close.
Erm, and you know this how?
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.
Also, if we rely on Amazon purely as a reference, I don't like the idea of the huge advantage they get on their competitors. Even if another site sells the book for cheaper, the convenience (pardon me, the conflict of interest) of mixing reference lists with sales catalogs seems a little too market-muddling for me.
"Old man yells at systemd"
So what rights do I have with this data? I was kinda burned when FireFly sold all my record reviews (along with those by hundreds of other users). CDDB being sold to (and locked up by) Escient is a better example of this phenomenon. (For those who arrived late, freedb is an open source fork of CDDB, which is now called GraceNote).
No more submissions from me until someone tells me what happens to my work. I don't mind someone like Jon Katz quoting my /. posts, but I'm not willing to have my work turned into proprietary data.
Good project tho; I'm surprised it took this long to happen.
Amazon edits the reviews in ways that some might object to.
Amazon limits reviews to 1000 words. 1000 words isn't really that much for some reviews.
Amazon lets people review books that they clearly haven't read (because they aren't even available yet).
And maybe you aren't entirely comfortable with the fact that when you submit a review to Amazon "you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media."
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!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
I would much rather research a book or series without being unindated with adds and guesses as to what I want, and sweaters randomly dropping down out of a Target tab
In order for this site to be taken seriously and comparable to Amazon, it needs millions of titles, much more features, and the ability to survive slashdot effect. This presumes a rather powerful database, quite a bit of storage and bandwidth. The current amateurish system would never survive this, it needs some serious full time staff to keep it running.
And there is no way this would be free unless the original poster is a philantropic millionaire.
When men used to be men
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...
This is a good idea. I have often thought that IMDB is the best site on the internet since it was ran from Cardiff Uni (Despite the US-centric reporting and rampant commercialism on the frontpage).
The main think the IMDB has over a similar book site is the interconnectedness of movies. With actors often appearing in more than one movie, the IMDB is just as much a database for actors, crew, writers, producers and composers as it is for movies.
With books all you can really index are the titles and the authors - and crossovers are rare.
You could still list the characters appearing in a book but due to the majority being one of appearances it's usefulness is definately restricted.
No playing six degrees with books. and no thinking "I really like that character. What else have they been in?"
All in all it's a nice idea but I can't see it reaching the same level of usefullness of IMDB.
Everyone who's chiming in with "What about Amazon" is missing the point of having an independant database whose purpose is to collect and distribute information.
Amazon is only interested in marketing books so people will buy them. They aren't going to carry information about things they can't sell.
The Library of Congress will carry information about the book, but no commentary or reviews... and even they won't store data on books that may be centuries old, or only available outside the United States.
As far as legal concerns... remember that little principle called "Fair Use" that all the big companies want to take away from us? Printing a self-compiled catalog of book titles, even with small excerpts, should be covered under fair use. Reviews of said titles should be 1st amendment. Of course, IANAL.
This is a great idea!
they really should have it user-submitted via a form and have it all automated. Or else this puppy's going to die purty darn fast.
click me
I remember when the IMDB was a collection of huge text files passed around on USENET. Next, it was converted into DOS-based database application. The app and a few hundred megabytes were passed around the 'net. Once the WWW thing caught on, it went to the web. I don't know if there was ever a time it was on the web but not the pimped commercial version it currently is.
Since it was a community effort, I felt it worthwhile to add my own contributions. I haven't felt compelled to contribute (can you?) to the current commercial incarnation, as it's not Free anymore.
My biggest fear is that such a project will sell out like CDDB and IMDB did, riding on the backs of those who selflessly contributed content.
Method of processing duck feet
Hi. I'm employed by a library and am working on a masters in library science, but IANAL(ibrarian).
That said, I spend a lot of time around databases of books. And I'd like to respond to a couple criticisms that have been raised in previous threads as well as make some suggestions.
It is true that are reference resources for books -- Books in Print with reviews, for example. And to an extent, BIP has been replaced by Amazon -- Because BIP costs money, whereas Amazon is fast and free. Librarians in general arn't happy about an entity with a stake in selling books controlling the reviews. They'd like to see a good, free resource develop.
But then we're vexed with the question of data format. We're developing free resources which we want to be interoperable, right? There is an internationally-accepted standard (data format) for electronic storage of bibliographic records -- it's called MARC. (http://www.loc.gov/marc/) Any new system storing records of books really should use MARC -- or at least be able to export to MARC, like allmusic/allmovie.com do.
Again, on the standards front -- what about subject tracings? Yeah, in the current database there's a place for genere, but books often cross those lines -- especially when you're dealing with nonfiction books. Library of Congress puts out a massive list of approved subject headings called (approperately) the library of congreess subject headings (LCSH). Wouldn't using those be wise? Plus you could get the records from the LoC already classified, saving a lot of work and arguments as to how to classify "the diamond age."
But downloading all those records manually would suck. Luckily, there's also a standard protocol for moving bibliographic records from one place to another -- z39.50. The advantage of z39.50 here would be that the maintainer of the site could suck zillions of bibiographic records from libraries, the LOC, whoever -- as well as share their records with libraries, schools, etc. They (for the most part) wouldn't have reviews, but they would have accurate summaries and bibiographic (size, publisher, isbn, pages, etc) information. To me, that seems like it would be a good way to start getting records for the userbase to augment. Plus, there's a z39.50 perl module available for your fun and entertainment. (http://perl.z3950.org/)
I think a database like this is ABSOLUTELY needed, and hope the creators will take these standards into account as their resource develops.
-- r . m o s q u i t o --
You do realize that IMDB.com is run by Amazon, don't you?
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful
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.
THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal...