Comparison of Internet Book Databases? 53
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? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Amazon? (Score:2)
Not listed (Score:3, Informative)
bn.com and amazon.com
Worldcat, of course. (Score:2, Informative)
Worldcat; one sly fox? (Score:2)
The link you provided was dead for me though, although this worked:
http://www.oclc.org/worldcat/ [oclc.org]
The whole thing looks rather suspiciously proprietary; in order to get access and be able to search directly, you have to pay -- or be a member of a library that does. Basically what they're doing is getting libraries to contribute their electronic catalogs to the database, and then selling access to the resulting data -- BACK to the librar
Amazon.com (Score:5, Insightful)
The most useful feature of the Amazon database is the user reviews. I usually check out the reviews on Amazon before I buy a book. Many of the reviewers are quite good, and trolls are usually easy to spot. I don't think it would be easy to replicate what Amazon has to offer. Yes, it's a commercial database, and you can't add titles to it, but those things don't really bother me, given that I have been able to get information on any book I have ever wanted on Amazon.
It would take one heck of a free book database project to beat it.
Re:Amazon.com (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Amazon.com (Score:4, Insightful)
One thing that should have been listed is Wikipedia, you'd be impressed with how many books there are. I tend to check Wikipedia on information on books before Amazon, althought it is still not nearly as comprehensive.
Re:Amazon.com (Score:2, Informative)
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 m
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Amazon.com (Score:3, Informative)
They still list books by my father that have been out of print since the late 70s and early 80s, so apparently not.
Re:Amazon.com (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a tendancy for books to be reviewed by the people who like them. The gushing enthusiasm syndrome is at its worst in the Big Fat Airport Book genre of science fiction. Disregarding reviews with substantial spelling or grammatical defects ameliorates this problem.
Reviews by shills are depressingly common. These are the worst sort, because they're often quite literate and to the point. They're hard to spot, too, mostly showing up if you've noticed the name of the reviewer in some other context in close association with the book's author's name.
(Begin main rant)
Finally there's the "Top NNN reviewer" syndrome. Some of these are authentic, but a lot seem to be by idiots who scan the provided publisher review for basic details and paraphrase them. They always award 5 stars (to get a "this review was useful for me" click from the author?) and they sometimes are laughably off base.
For example, from the 5 star review for a book of mine:
"This should not be your first book on computers..."
Well no. That's because it's called "Building Portals with the Java Portlet API" and someone completely ignorant of computers wouldn't choose that in preference to an obvious beginners book on computing unless they were doing a LOT of drugs.
The guy who wrote that review is a "top ten" reviewer. His recent reviews covered such subjects as ASP.NET, Reproductive Biology, Architecture, the Confederate Horse Artillery, Corporate Finance, and Cultural anthropology.
None of these reviews contain any facts from outside the editorial reviews. Every one of his last 50 reviews was a five star reviews. Either he's REALLY enthusiastic about a LOT of subjects, or he's some complete tosser who's writing reviews of books he's not read in order to get whatever benefits acrue from being a Top 10 Reviewer.
And if he's honest, then I'm a leopard.
Amazon, of course, don't care because it helps to sell books when naiive users see a five star review from an apparently disinterested third party for a book they were considering buying.
Personally, however, I'm happier with the readers who disliked my book, awarded it the minimum one star rating (how come you can't give zero?) but were writing an honest review. Even if they are eejots
I wish Amazon would consider the longer term effect on their reputation and kick out any top reviewer who's taking this approach. But I won't hold my breath.
(End rant)
Re:Amazon.com (Score:2)
If a book gets loads of one and two star reviews from right wing evangelical nutcases who can't spell, it's probably a good book. This is quite common for books by Pinker, Dawkins, Dennett etc. (For some reason, I don't see too many reviews from the left wing nutcases. Why is that?)
If, on the other hand, the one star revi
Re:Amazon.com (Score:2)
Very true. Applies on
I would be hard put to justify the correlation on any logical basis, but it does appear to hold true from the empirical evidence available!
Re:Amazon.com (Score:2)
The reviews are awful, it seems the most popular, dumbed-down books released in the last few years are the only ones which get any decent ratings.
Not to mention the site is cut up into geographical areas, so you end up having to go to several different entries for a book
Re:Amazon.com (Score:2)
In short, I like amazon.com, but I wish there was a non-profit entity that
Supplier Databases (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Supplier Databases (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Supplier Databases (Score:2, Funny)
"While they may not have the scope of the publicly listed databases, they do include books they haven't been published yet."
Bor-ing! My MTMD (Massive Typing Monkey Database) has books that haven't been written, yet!
IBDOF (Score:2, Funny)
Come again?
Re:IBDOF (Score:2)
More criticisms: Their website design is questionable; it looks like a combination of the default phpbb subSilver theme combinaed with poorly-cre
Re:IBDOF (Score:2)
ISBNDB (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Reader (Score:3, Informative)
Reader2 (Score:1)
Re:Reader2 (Score:2)
The Online Books Page; LoC catalog (Score:3, Informative)
For dead tree books, you can search the LoC online catalog: http://catalog.loc.gov/ [loc.gov]
ISFDB (Score:3, Informative)
LT, Picarta, Google, European Library (Score:3, Informative)
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."
LibraryThing (Score:4, Informative)
Amazon + Listal (Score:1)
E-book Libraries (Score:2)
Don't forget that there are not just libraries of book metadata online, there are libraries of complete books:
While these libraries are by no means as extensive as something like Amazon [amazon.com], it's nice having the full text of the books themselves.
Project Gutenberg new URL (Score:1)
The current home of Project Gutenberg is http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org]
Comic Book and SF Fiction databases (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Library of Congress, of course (Score:2)
Re:Library of Congress, of course (Score:1)
don't forget library resources (Score:4, Informative)
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.
theassayer.org (Score:1)
How about the British Library? (Score:2)
Always found it very good
LibraryThing's "Works" (Score:2)
Free stuff to developer (Score:2)
Can anyone help me out?
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/bookscan/#quick [eblong.com] sug
Alexandria (Score:2)
Re:Alexandria (Score:2)