Open Library Projects

Provide information here about projects you are involved with that have anything to do with Open Library.

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I (John Rigdon) am working on a project to extract the search results or a list to a CSV file. This allows me to create my own book list or use the CSV file for creating my own bibliography. The end result of the process may be seen here:

http://www.researchonline.net/rolib/alcivilwar1.htm

This allows me to link to the OL edition of a book while putting my own "wrapper" to the book.

The elements extracted are

works URL - works/OL2506471W/Fitz-John_Porter
full title - Fitz-John Porter
authorurl - authors/OL352199A/Logan_John_Alexander
author - Alexander, Logan, John
archiveurl - http://www.archive.org/stream/fitzjohnportersp00loga
coverurl - http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/olid/OL13500977M-S.jpg
abbreviated title - Fitz-John Porter

The program is written for Windows in Visual Basic. If you think you may have a use for this tool, drop me a note at jrigdon@researchonline.net and I will polish it up and document it for distribution

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MARC for Open Access eBooks

I (Karen Coyle) am working with Tom Johnson to extract MARC records representing the open access books that are on OL. Our goal is to make them into valid records for ebooks, following the library cataloging and coding rules, and then to offer them to anyone who serves libraries. These records should be able to be ingested into standard library systems. This way, libraries can have references to open access ebooks right in their catalogs. Some ideas are:
1. Match the OL ebook records to the library's catalog and add links for anything that the library owns so that the users see both the hard copy and the digital copy.
2. Create lists of "classics" or by topic ("children's books") that libraries can take in as a collection

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Bugs affecting end users

I (Jessamyn West) have been working on the FAQ (troubleshooting section specifically) to try to minimize "How do I do this?" and "This isn't working." support email that I answer, but there are still a few broken things that could use fixing at some point. I'm listing them here just to keep track of them. These are things I've tested and can reproduce.

Bugs

• Books can be checked out using software such as Overdrive Media Console or Bluefire but can not be returned with that software, can not be returned at all actually
• If something goes wrong with a download it can't be returned so the download can be retried.
• People IP addresses aren't always properly resolving and they get a new IP and suddenly can't see lending library books
• recaptcha errors (and images do not appear) when people follow OL links from certain other places such as from within OPACs fixed!
• hitting browser's back button when you get a "username not available" error during signup does not reload the recaptcha images and will subsequently always fail fixed!
• The index link on the footer of the home page (http://openlibrary.org/index/) produces a 404 error removed!

Things not working as expected/advertised

• Search inside box does not work on ipad.
• Searching for multiple words fails in an unexpected way
• The functions to export a list to JSON, HTML, or BibTex does not work. (This has been this way for at least 12 months - Reported by John Rigdon)
• The "activity" function of the List feature doesn't work.
• Undoing massive (spammy?) author merges times out and does not work.
• Books exist in Open Library that are not editable and have bad metadata (example, example)
• When items are deleted they still appear on author pages and in search results and the link goes to a "This item has been deleted" page.

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Uses of Coverstore

• GWU's Launchpad documentation links

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