Tag Archives: features

Here you can read blog posts about Open Library features that make it easier to browse or checkout books or navigate our catalog.

Reading Logs: Going Public & Helping Book Lovers Share

Hi book lovers,

Starting 2020-05-26, Reading Logs for new Open Library accounts will be public by default. Readers may go here to view or manage their Reading Log privacy preferences. This will not affect the privacy of your reading history — only books which you explicitly mark as Want to Read, Currently Reading, or Already Read on Open Library. The Reading Logs of patrons who signed up for Open Library accounts prior to this date will remain private until they choose to update their settings here. New users may also set their Reading Logs to private using this same link.

Open Library has consistently valued two principles: openness and reader privacy. As an open source, public library, we feel strongly about creating a warm, welcoming ecosystem which promotes sharing, diversity, and openness. We’re stronger, together, when we work as a community. At the same time, Open Library is dedicated to providing a secure, safe, and judgement-free service for those who rely on reader privacy. We take our responsibility as a library strongly to safeguard what books you’re reading and borrowing, unless you decide to share this information.

Since 2010, OpenLibrary.org has offered public reading lists to help patrons organize and share books they love. Since then, readers have published more than 130,000 public lists.

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Star Ratings are Here!

Over the last six months, more than 145,000 of you have tracked which books you want-to-read. Now you can record how you feel about the books you’ve finished reading using star ratings!

Next time you’re on a book page, you’ll see 5-stars beneath the book cover. By clicking one of the 5 stars, you can select the corresponding rating for this book. Your ratings are private by default, though we do intend to offer an option for making your ratings public. Also, while it’s not finished yet, we are working on adding average star ratings to our books pages so you can learn how the community feels about different titles.

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Turn Your Website into a Library

Openlibrary.org has over 3M books lining its digital shelves, but nothing quite beats being able to embed your favorite book directly on your personal site. Last week, with the help of volunteer Galen Mancino, we launched an embed tool which lets you add any Open Library book to your website or blog. Next time you write a book review, you can place its Open Library book right next to it and, if its available, enable your audience to read it with a single click.

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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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