The openlibrary.org website used to become unavailable for short durations whenever we deployed new code. This was a due a problem in lighttpd fastcgi handling. Now we switched to gunicorn, a brand new web server in Python, and that solved this problem. Code deploys are now very smooth and this is a major step towards improving the overall stability of the system.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Reading Desk 2.0
We’re busily preparing for tomorrow and Friday’s Books in Browsers conference here at the Internet Archive. In terms of the Open Library, the meeting will herald the release of a flurry of new features, including our new Full Text search and a redesign of the Internet Archive BookReader. (More on those later.)
It just so happens that when we moved into our new home — formerly a Christian Science Church — we inherited a bunch of furniture, including some classic old reading desks that came out of the church’s reading room. We’ve given them an update, and thanks to Raj, you can see Reading Desk 2.0:
Reading Desk 2.0, built by Jermaine, soon to be running the new IA touch bookreader!
Reading Desk 2.0, June, Brewster, Jermaine, Chris
Brewster at the Desk
Woo!
The Precious Hand of Isaac Newton
We had some welcome visitors at our weekly Books meeting this morning: the coordinators of the Internet Archive’s scanning efforts, from 21 scanning centers around the planet. It was great to hear from Andy, who runs the scanning out of Boston Public Library, who mentioned how happy BPL are to have scanned one of their most prized volumes. It’s a copy of Opticks by Isaac Newton, owned and inscribed by the author himself.
It’s goosebump-inducing to see annotations in Newton’s own hand, and I particularly like all the “old-time post-it notes” in the front of the volume that warn not to let this book leave the library.
Why Computers Can't Do The Job
As we work towards a re-release of full text search on Open Library (peek), we’ve seen much more of the OCR output of our book scans. Depending on the text, the OCR can range from 99% perfect to 99% covered in gobbledygook. Hence my delight to see oldweather.org from the Zooniverse Project, where you and I can “help improve reconstructions of past weather and climate across the world by finding and recording historical weather observations in handwritten Royal Navy ship logs.”
Why computers can’t do the job from National Maritime Museum on Vimeo.
Merge Authors: The Screencast
Thanks again to Super Intern, Megan for creating this excellent screencast about merging authors on Open Library. It’s been a fantastically successful release so far, resulting in over 100,000 edits in the last 28 days! You can watch merges as they happen in the new Author Merges recent changes view. Thanks, Megan!