Author Archives: mek

About mek

Citizen of the World, Open Librarian @ openlibrary.org

Library Explorer at Library Leaders Forum

Introducing the Open Library Explorer

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Try it here! If you like it, share it.

Bringing 100 Years of Librarian-Knowledge to Life

By Nick Norman with Drini Cami & Mek

At the Library Leaders Forum 2020 (demo), Open Library unveiled the beta for what it’s calling the Library Explorer: an immersive interface which powerfully recreates and enhances the experience of navigating a physical library. If the tagline doesn’t grab your attention, wait until you see it in action:

Drini showcasing Library Explorer at the Library Leaders Forum
Get Ready to Explore

In this article, we’ll give you a tour of the Open Library Explorer and teach you how one may take full advantage of its features. You’ll also get a crash course on the 100+ years of library history which led to its innovation and an opportunity to test-drive it for yourself. So let’s get started!  

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Importing your Goodreads & Accessing them with Open Library’s APIs

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by Mek

Today Joe Alcorn, founder of readng, published an article (https://joealcorn.co.uk/blog/2020/goodreads-retiring-API) sharing news with readers that Amazon’s Goodreads service is in the process of retiring their developer APIs, with an effective start date of last Tuesday, December 8th, 2020.

Deprecation notice on Goodreads API documentation
A screenshot taken from Joe Alcorn’s post

The topic stirred discussion among developers and book lovers alike, making the front-page of the popular Hacker News website.

Hacker News at 2020-12-13 1:30pm Pacific.
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Amplifying the Voices Behind Books With the Power of Data

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Exploring how Open Library uses author data to help readers move from imagination to impact

By Nick Norman, Edited by Mek & Drini

Image Source: Pexels / Pixabay from popsugar

According to René Descartes, a creative mathematician, “The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest [people] of past centuries.” If that’s true, then who are some of the people you’re talking to?

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Google Summer of Code 2020: Adoption by Book Lovers

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by Tabish Shaikh & Mek

OpenLibrary.org,the world’s best-kept library secret: Let’s make it easier for book lovers to discover and get started with Open Library.

Hi, my name is Tabish Shaikh and this summer I participated in the Google Summer of Code program with Open Library to develop improvements which will help book lovers discover and use OpenLibrary.org.

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Open Library for Language Learners

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By Guyrandy Jean-Gilles 2020-07-21

A quick browse through the App Store and aspiring language learners will find themselves swimming in useful programs.

But for experienced linguaphiles, the never-ending challenge is finding enough raw content and media to consume in their adopted tongue. Open Library can help.

Earlier this year, Open Library added reading levels to their catalog for more than three thousand books. The ability to search by reading level, combined with filtering by language, provides the savvy patron a convenient way to find, read, and listen to handfuls of elementary books in their desired language.

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