Slashdot Mirror
Comparison of Internet Book Databases?
An anonymous reader asks: "There have been several attempts at creating a book database like the IMDB. I list several [in the full article] and I would like to know which you like best, and which you use most often. What are the features you find the most useful out of the book databases you use?"
"Here is a list of free Internet book databases:
IBDOF - The Internet Book Database of Fiction
IBList - The Internet Book List
Parchayi.net - Parchayi.net Book Database
SciFan - SciFan
FantasticFiction.co.uk - Fantastic Fiction
And I know of only one commercial one, the FictionDB, which is the largest among all the ones that have been listed.
Does anyone know of any others?"
IBDOF - The Internet Book Database of Fiction
IBList - The Internet Book List
Parchayi.net - Parchayi.net Book Database
SciFan - SciFan
FantasticFiction.co.uk - Fantastic Fiction
And I know of only one commercial one, the FictionDB, which is the largest among all the ones that have been listed.
Does anyone know of any others?"
How about Amazon? They have many many books, including old/out of print- at least listed.
I use a couple not listed...
bn.com and amazon.com
Working in a bookstore allows me access to book supplier databases such as iPage. While they may not have the scope of the publicly listed databases, they do include books they haven't been published yet.
ISBNDB make all their data available through a web service as well. That's a killer feature as far as I'm concerned.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Not so. While that sometimes happens with CDs, book listings stay around forever. Amazon contains books concerning obscure fields, published in microscope quantities, and fallen out of print decades ago. I study linguistics, which means I read a lot of dusty old monographs, and I never have a problem finding them on Amazon.com to review. Take Brian Joseph's The Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive , an obscure Cambridge University Press publication from 1983 really targeted just at libraries and never cheap enough for individuals. It still has an Amazon.com listing.
IMDB is now owned by a corporate entity, and while the quality has decreased, there's no problem with disappearing listings.
Personally, I have been using Reader, but mainly because it allows me to easily keep track of what books I've read or am currently reading. I don't think as a database it's as exhaustive as some of the other solutions. But, as others have pointed out, there's Amazon for that.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ - Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web
For dead tree books, you can search the LoC online catalog: http://catalog.loc.gov/
Worldcat. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/default.htm/ . 65 million items. No more and no less than a unified catalog of mayor libraries, in the US and beyond, unified on the basis of sharing open-format records (MARC), that obey clear standards of bibliographic description and classification, developed and proven thru many decades. AARC2, LCSH, etc. Where cataloguers have gone thru the pain of researching who is who, what is what and where is where. And not just books, but serial publications, maps, sound recordings, pictures, computer files, and those weird things called realia. I love library catalogs and the cataloguers that make them. (Library reference zombies, and Library managers, that is another story).
http://www.isfdb.org/ Apart from the very handy website, there is a nice MySQL database dump that is very easy to grab and use yourself. It helped me find some old novels that had read that I couldn't remember the name of, but knew when they were published. A few queries, and there you go.
Not Free SF Reader
http://www.oclcpica.org/
http://books.google.com/
http://www.librarything.com/
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/
Were you looking for something specific?
From LT's FAQ:
"LibraryThing uses Amazon and libraries that provide open access to their collections with the Z39.50 protocol. The protocol is used by a variety of desktop programs, notably bibliographic software like EndNote. LibraryThing appears to be the first mainstream web use."
They still list books by my father that have been out of print since the late 70s and early 80s, so apparently not.
Using HTML in email is like putting sound effects on your phone calls. Just say <strong>no</strong>.
Of the ones you mention I've used FantasticFiction more than once, perhaps because it came up first on the Google search.
There's the CBDB for comic books.
And The Locus Index for science fiction and fantasy works, featuring short stories (which is no small task).
Alex.
I'm a big fan of Amazon.com when looking for book information, but I'd also like to point out that public libraries often pay for access to book databases for their patrons, many of which can be accessed from home.
My library subscribes to Novelist and Novelist K-8, which can be awesome when looking for fiction.
Many libraries also pay for patron access to the Books in Print database.
Finally, if you're determined enough, you can find some interesting things in WorldCat, the union catalog of OCLC libraries. This is now searchable from Google and other places.
LibraryThing is pretty cool. It's a member-built database, but it links back to Amazon to get a lot of the details.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.