So the Open Library, a project by the Internet Archive that has a structured wiki page for every book and which also lends books online, has announced they just got new "Read" API.[1, 2] The announcement describes its as:
"The idea is, you can hit the Read API with an identifier or a series of identifiers or an array of identifiers, and it will tell whether there is a readable or borrowable version available through Open Library. As you render a page in your own bookish website, you can paint links into Open Library based on the response."
I wonder if there is some use case for this in Wikipedia or other projects? Perhaps linking references or book articles to Open Library copies? Letting Wikimedians know when they can borrow reference works for free online? I figure that identifiers like ISBNs are all over the place in Wikimedia content.
Not sure, but it's interesting to think about. Their open source online book reader is also pretty awesome and isn't Flash based.
Steven
1. http://blog.openlibrary.org/2011/06/03/announcing-a-new-read-api/ 2. http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/read