One of the things that drives me crazy when doing things like SFAW is the lack of an easy way to direct people at books. Providing Amazon links is all very well, but I don’t like encouraging the creation of a monopoly retailer, and an ASIN only points to one edition of a book. So I was quite interested by Open Library, which provides a range of purchasing and borrowing options. Unfortunately it suffers from the same problem. Again there is a separate record for each edition of a book, and no means of linking those editions together as different instances of the same thing. One day someone will get this right, but it may not be soon.
3 thoughts on “Catalog Neepery”
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Wikipedia.
If the book if important/interesting enough to recommend, it’s good enough for a wikipedia article. If there is no article for that book, create one!
Librarything does this-all editions of a book are a work. For buying purposes, not perhaps as useful, though they do link to some independent bookstores.
Joseph:
I think you have got entirely the wrong end of the stick there. The point is that I should find someone else who is creating the database and be able to access it, not to have to create the database myself. (Not to mention having to spend days squabbling with tin-pot dictators in the form of Wikipedia admins who object to having to live in a fact-based universe.)
Nadine:
You are right, it does. And it has links to Amazon and B&N. This looks promising. Thank you!