Comparison of Internet Book Databases?

An anonymous reader asks: "There have been several attempts at creating a book database like the IMDB. I list several [in the full article] and I would like to know which you like best, and which you use most often. What are the features you find the most useful out of the book databases you use?"

"Here is a list of free Internet book databases:

IBDOF - The Internet Book Database of Fiction
IBList - The Internet Book List
Parchayi.net - Parchayi.net Book Database
SciFan - SciFan
FantasticFiction.co.uk - Fantastic Fiction

And I know of only one commercial one, the FictionDB, which is the largest among all the ones that have been listed.

Does anyone know of any others?"

Amazon?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Amazon? They have many many books, including old/out of print- at least listed.

Not listed

[WedgeTalon]

I use a couple not listed...

bn.com and amazon.com

Supplier Databases

[Monkeys!!!]

Working in a bookstore allows me access to book supplier databases such as iPage [ingrambook.com]. While they may not have the scope of the publicly listed databases, they do include books they haven't been published yet.

Re:Supplier Databases

[TopShelf]

For further info on iPage, head here [ingrambook.com]. There's a free basic subscription which gives access to over 2 million titles...

Re:Amazon.com

[NMThor]

Unfortunately, as soon as amazon decided to stop selling a book, or for whatever reason, the listing will be gone.

It seems to me that Amazon does keep books that are no longer being sold (e.g. "out-of-print") in it's database. I have looked for information on a lot of older scientific texts on Amazon and I have yet to find a book that hasn't been listed on Amazon, even those that aren't being sold anymore. Might not have, for example, a book image displayed, but it'll be there. Of course, this doesn't mean that one day Amazon could decide to drop all out-of-date listings, but for now...

ISBNDB

[Bogtha]

ISBNDB [isbndb.com] make all their data available through a web service [isbndb.com] as well. That's a killer feature as far as I'm concerned.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Reader

[jacoplane]

Personally, I have been using Reader [reader2.com], but mainly because it allows me to easily keep track of what books I've read or am currently reading. I don't think as a database it's as exhaustive as some of the other solutions. But, as others have pointed out, there's Amazon for that.

The Online Books Page; LoC catalog

[Anonymous Coward]

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ [upenn.edu] - Listing over 25,000 free books on the Web

For dead tree books, you can search the LoC online catalog: http://catalog.loc.gov/ [loc.gov]

Worldcat, of course.

[Anonymous Coward]

Worldcat. http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/default.htm/ [oclc.org] . 65 million items. No more and no less than a unified catalog of mayor libraries, in the US and beyond, unified on the basis of sharing open-format records (MARC), that obey clear standards of bibliographic description and classification, developed and proven thru many decades. AARC2, LCSH, etc. Where cataloguers have gone thru the pain of researching who is who, what is what and where is where. And not just books, but serial publications, maps, sound recordings, pictures, computer files, and those weird things called realia. I love library catalogs and the cataloguers that make them. (Library reference zombies, and Library managers, that is another story).

ISFDB

[AussieVamp2]

http://www.isfdb.org/ [isfdb.org] Apart from the very handy website, there is a nice MySQL database dump that is very easy to grab and use yourself. It helped me find some old novels that had read that I couldn't remember the name of, but knew when they were published. A few queries, and there you go.

LT, Picarta, Google, European Library

[bbc]

http://www.oclcpica.org/ [oclcpica.org]
http://books.google.com/ [google.com]
http://www.librarything.com/ [librarything.com]
http://www.theeuropeanlibrary.org/ [theeuropeanlibrary.org]

Were you looking for something specific?

From LT's FAQ [librarything.com]:

"LibraryThing uses Amazon and libraries that provide open access to their collections with the Z39.50 [wikipedia.org] protocol. The protocol is used by a variety of desktop programs, notably bibliographic software like EndNote. LibraryThing appears to be the first mainstream web use."

Re:Amazon.com

[NickFitz]

Unfortunately, as soon as amazon decided to stop selling a book, or for whatever reason, the listing will be gone.

They still list books by my father that have been out of print since the late 70s and early 80s, so apparently not.

Comic Book and SF Fiction databases

[xanderwilson]

Of the ones you mention I've used FantasticFiction more than once, perhaps because it came up first on the Google search.

There's the CBDB [cbdb.com] for comic books.

And The Locus Index [locusmag.com] for science fiction and fantasy works, featuring short stories (which is no small task).

Alex.

don't forget library resources

[shalla]

I'm a big fan of Amazon.com when looking for book information, but I'd also like to point out that public libraries often pay for access to book databases for their patrons, many of which can be accessed from home.

My library subscribes to Novelist [epnet.com] and Novelist K-8, which can be awesome when looking for fiction.

Many libraries also pay for patron access to the Books in Print database.

Finally, if you're determined enough, you can find some interesting things in WorldCat [oclc.org], the union catalog of OCLC libraries. This is now searchable from Google and other places.

LibraryThing

[booch]

LibraryThing [librarything.com] is pretty cool. It's a member-built database, but it links back to Amazon to get a lot of the details.