Category Archives: Interface/Design

Re-thinking Open Library’s Book Pages

by Mek Karpeles, Tabish Shaikh

We’ve redesigned our Book Pages: BeforeAfter.
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.

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Share what you’re reading

To bring in the new year, Open Library announced a new feature called the Reading Log which lets you keep track of the books you’re currently reading, have finished reading, or want to read. Over the last two months since we launched the feature, we’ve received promising feedback from our community. Our reading log stats page shows over 53,000 readers have logged more than 100,000 books! It’s even helped us learn which books our community cares most about. The biggest point of feedback we’ve received is that many readers wish there was a way to share their reading log with friends.

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A Holiday Gift from Open Library: Introducing the Reading Log

For years readers have been asking us for a convenient way to keep track of the books they’re reading.

As we prepare to step through the threshold into 2018, we’re happy to announce the release of a brand new Reading Log feature which lets you indicate all the books you’d like to read, books you’ve already read, and books you’re currently reading.

You can now mark a book as “Want to Read”, “Currently Reading”, or “Already Read”, in addition to adding it to one of your themed reading lists.

Here’s how it works!

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Lists are here!

Open Library is happy to report that the Lists feature is here, for your collection-building enjoyment! You can create and share lists that include authors, works (all editions of a specific title), specific editions, and subjects.

Add to List icon

While browsing around, you can see when an item has been added to somebody’s list – just look underneath the Add to List button.  Here are some items that have been listed so far:

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