[Foundation-l] Universal Library

[Yann Forget]

David Goodman wrote:
> I have read your proposal. I continue to be of the opinion that we are
> not competent to do this. Since the proposal  says, that "this project
> requires as much database management knowledge as librarian
> knowledge," it confirms my opinion. You will never merge the data
> properly if you do not understand it.

That's all the point that it needs to be join project: database gurus
with librarians. What I see is that OpenLibrary lacks some basic
features that Wikimedia projects have since a long time (in Internet
scale): easy redirects, interwikis, mergings, deletion process, etc.
Some of these are planned for the next version of their software, but I
still feel that sometimes they try to reinvent the wheel we already have.

OL claims to have 23 million book and author entries. However many
entries are duplicates of the same edition, not to mention the same
book, so the real number of unique entries is much lower. I also see
that Wikisource has data which are not included in their database (and
certainly also Wikipedia, but I didn't really check).

> You suggest 3 practical steps
> 1. an extension for finding a book in OL is certainly doable--and it
> has been done, see
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Book_sources].
> 2. an OL  field,  link to WP -- as you say, this is already present.
> 3. An OL field, link to Wikisource. A very good project. It will be
> they who need to do it.

Yes, but I think we should fo further than that. OpenLibrary has an API
which would allow any relevant wiki article to be dynamically linked to
their data, or that an entry could be created every time new relevant
data is added to a Wikipedia projects. This is all about avoiding
duplicate work between Wikimedia and OpenLibrary. It could also increase
accuracy by double checking facts (dates, name and title spelling, etc.)
between our projects.

> Agreed we need translation information--I think this is a very
> important priority.   It's not that hard to do a list or to add links
> that will be helpful, though not  exact enough to be relied on in
> further work.  That's probably a reasonable project, but it is very
> far from "a database of all books ever published"
> 
> But some of this is being done--see the frWP page for Moby Dick:
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby_Dick
> (though it omits a number of the translations listed in the French Union
> Catalog, http://corail.sudoc.abes.fr/xslt/DB=2.1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=8063&SRT=RLV&TRM=Moby+Dick]
> I would however not warrant without seeing the items in hand, or
> reading an authoritative review, that they are all complete
> translations.
> The English page on the novel lists no translations;  perhaps we could
> in practice assume that the interwiki links are sufficient. Perhaps
> that could be assumed in Wiksource also?

That's another possible benefit: automatic list of
works/editions/translations in a Wikipedia article.

You could add {{OpenLibrary|author=Jules Verne|lang=English}} and you
have a list of English translations of Jules Verne's works directly
imported from their database. The problem is that, right now, Wikimedia
projects have often more accurate and more detailed information than
OpenLibrary.

> David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

Regards,

Yann
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