It’s been some months since we’ve updated you about what the Open Library is up to. Sorry about that. Thought it might be nice to produce a novella/brain dump to let you know where we’re at.
The short answer is: all sorts of things! I’ve been leading the project now for about 6 months, and have finally settled down enough to tell you what we’re up to. We’d love to hear what you think of our ideas perhaps in the comments of this post, or on our general discussion mailing list.
The Open Library project began in February of 2007, and launched in November that year, so it’s approaching 3 years old. During that time, we’ve amassed one of the biggest virtual library catalogs online, at some 23 million edition entries and some 6 million or so author records. We also have a ton of book covers. Our catalog is entirely open and free to use. You can download everything if you wish, or use our API to either link to our records, or to display Open Library data on your website.
