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.
The topic stirred discussion among developers and book lovers alike, making the front-page of the popular Hacker News website.
This summer, Open Library and the Internet Archive took part in Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a Google initiative to help students gain coding experience by contributing to open source projects. I was lucky enough to mentor Giacomo while he worked on improving our BookReader experience and infrastructure. We have invited Giacomo to write a blog post to share some of the wonderful work he has done and his learnings. It was a pleasure working with you Giacomo, and we all wish you the best of luck with the rest of your studies! – Drini
Hi, I am Giacomo Cignoni, a 2nd year computer science student from Italy. I submitted my 2020 Google Summer of Code (GSoC) project to work with the Internet Archive and I was selected for it. In this blogpost, I want to tell you about my experience and my accomplishments working this summer on BookReader, Internet Archive’s open source book reading web application.
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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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by Mek Karpeles, Tabish Shaikh
We’ve redesigned our Book Pages: Before →After.
Please share your feedback with us.
A web page for every book… This is the mission of Open Library: a free, inclusive, online digital library catalog which helps readers find information about any book ever published.
Millions of books in Open Library’s catalog have been made available to preview, read, or borrow using the Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending library. However, the catalog also features tens of millions of books which are yet to have previews and instead serve as resources that help patrons learn more about books, share lists of books they love, keep track of what they’re reading, and locate copies from bookstores and local libraries.
Continue readingBy Omar Rafik El-Sabrout & Mek
Earlier this week, Open Library’s Mek Karpeles, Internet Archive Summer of Code fellow Tabish Shaikh, and members of the community announced the launch of a new Book Sponsorship program which, boingboing.net explains, “lets you direct a cash donation to pay for the purchase and scanning of any books. In return, you are first in line to check that book out when it is available, and then anyone who holds an Open Library library card can check it out.”
So far, the program has been met by enthusiasm by readers and authors who are eager to play a role in shaping the world’s largest online digital library.