Frequently Asked Questions

What is OpenLibrary.org?

OpenLibrary.org, a project of the Internet Archive, is an open semantic
wiki that builds on bibliographic metadata from world’s leading
libraries and publishers that includes references to electronic book
collections, physical libraries and booksellers.

How do I edit the information about a particular book?

Book bibliographic metadata is editable by clicking first on the book in
question to arrive at the correct details page. Click the edit button
within the description section and make your desired edit. Be sure to
press save when your edit is complete.

How do I add information about a book that is not cataloged in OpenLibrary.org

Follow the “add a book” link from the
home page.

How is this different from Project Gutenberg?

Project Gutenberg provides text files of a select number of
out-of-copyright books. Our goal is to list every book -- whether
in-print or out-of-print, available at a bookstore or a library, scanned
or typed in as text. We provide pointers to Gutenberg texts as well as
Internet Archive scans as well as Amazon downloads or library
borrowing.

Have you heard of WorldCat? Have you talked to OCLC?

The OpenLibrary project is an opensource project of the Internet
Archive. This is important because the OpenLibrary project has many
participants that do not work for and are not directed by the Internet
Archive. That said the Internet Archive has been working to provide
resources, such as databases, to the OpenLibrary project.

A major difference between OCLC and the OpenLibrary is that OCLC is
building a catalog to share among libraries, while OpenLibrary is
building a catalog to share with the public, with the hope that this
will get more people involved in using libraries.

The Internet Archive and OCLC have discussed working together, and
hopefully this will yield a joint project, but nothing has been
finalized yet. The plans for the OpenLibrary have been actively
shared with OCLC and its records are available to OCLC.

Leveraging the records in WorldCat could mean several things:

1. pointing to WorldCat from the OpenLibrary site
   
2. getting records from libraries
   
3. getting records from OCLC

Option (1) has the advantage that it can be done with no agreements, but
there would be no integrated user experience like there is at wikipedia,
amazon.com, or IMDB. Options (2) and (3) are being pursued.

For background, the Internet Archive had a longstanding deal with the
Research Libraries Group (RLG) to make RLG digitized book records (as
well as other Internet Archive records) available for free with no
restrictions. With RLG now part of
OCLC, this deal
continues. To date, the Internet Archive has generally retrieved
records from the source library's catalog rather than RLG because of the
preference of the source library. These records from the Internet
Archive have been integrated into the Open Library site.

The Internet Archive's catalog is available using the Open Archives
Initiative protocol, and in bulk from the
Mellon funded OAIster project, which was
designed for metadata harvesting.

Which book classifications system will you use? Dewey? LC? Tags?

All of the above. We want to have as much classifying information as
possible, so that people and libraries can use whichever mechanisms they
like.

Can OpenLibrary.org help me value a book that I have?

OpenLibrary.org does refer users to various booksellers when we have the
ability to do so, however we have no information regarding the value of
books.

Can OpenLibrary sell a book for me?

No, OpenLibrary.org is not a book seller. We have no physical or
electronic books.

How do I search for a particular book on OpenLibrary.org?

If you know the title, usually a simple bibliographic metadata search
from the home page will yield the results you are looking for.
Otherwise, use the advanced search
functions, including full text search
to find your book.

How do I search for a particular subject on OpenLibrary?

Subjects are searchable from the advanced search
page.

How do I search for a particular author on OpenLibrary?

Authors are searchable from the advanced search
page.
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