Over the last few months, a handful of the developers at the Internet Archive have begun working more closely with Open Library code, where previously, the project was more isolated and had really only been worked on by the core team of, well, two: Anand & Edward. Apart from more fun collaborating with colleagues across the Archive, this increased exposure of the Open Library code base has been profoundly useful for the project. Apart from the very useful fresh perspectives and questions, it’s also led to an improved toolset for getting a developer’s instance of Open Library up and running on your local machine – so important when you’re trying to find your way around a new system.

The cherry on top is an install script for Linux, written by Raj Kumar, on top of the awesome work done by Michael Ang (Mang) to prepare for our recent Lending launch. The updated docs are here:

http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/setup

This is a bit of a milestone for us – making the codebase more accessible and easier to work with is something we’ve wanted for ages, so it’s nice to see it well on its way.