[iDC] Media dies more slowly than some would like (David Weinberger)

[David Weinberger]

There's lots of interesting work being done on this. It is, fundamentally,
an ontological problem: What is a book? Is it an edition? A print run? Do
translations count? Large print versions? Parodies? etc. While there are
various standards in place (ISBN for something like editions, FRBR for
various levels of generality XISBN to try to pull together multiple
editions), the problem remains. E.g., if you want to link to a book, what do
you link to?

One of the most promising efforts to aggregate  book information is
OpenLibrary.org. It wants to build home pages for every book. At the home
page you'll find links to all the different editions and versions, to
reviews and commentary, etc. All of the information it gathers will be open.
They have something like 10M book entries already, but they're just at the
beginning of figuring out how to stitch it all together. Plus, they're
looking for more libraries willing to upload their catalogs.

I'm personally also very interested in LibraryThing.com. FreeBase has what
seems like a useful (and extensible) set of book metadata. But there's
_lots_ going on here, and I'm sure many of you know far more about it than
I.

Best,

David W.

On Dec 6, 2007 12:11 PM, Samuel Rose <samuel.rose at gmail.com> wrote:

> An interesting discussion.
>
> I have to agree with the assertion that many, many books will not be
> digitized into "e-books" any time soon. Although, I do think it is plausible
> that a majority of books could be digitized eventually, if enough people
> care to do it. (Wait until the software and hardware to scan in books become
> very cheap, and then people will be doing it in their homes).
>
> This subject also has me thinking about some interesting possibilities
> with digitized meta-data *about* print books. This could be massively useful
> if structured right. I think about this also when I visit libraries doing
> research. Sure, libraries have catalogues of "what relates to what" with
> meta-data, and so on. But, what if you could also access this data from your
> friends, and colleagues in your areas of study, maybe on a cell phone while
> at the library?  Maybe you'd  enter an ISBN number in, and the book, as an
> "object", would have many, many items of meta-data, and connection to other
> "objects"  attached to it. The building blocks for this exist, and some
> people I am sure have come very close to building this, but a usable system
> would be awesome to have..
>
>
>
>
-- 
David Weinberger
Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center
blog: www.JohoTheBlog.com
new book: www.EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com
mail: self at evident.com
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