[Foundation-l] Universal Library

[Lars Aronsson]

Yann Forget wrote:

> I started a proposal on the Strategy Wiki:
> http://strategy.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposal:Building_a_database_of_all_books_ever_published
> 
> IMO this should be a join project between Openlibrary and Wikimedia.


Again, I don't understand why.  What exactly is missing in 
OpenLibrary?  Why does it need to be a new, joint project?

The page says "There is currently no database of all books ever 
published freely available."  But OpenLibrary is a project already 
working towards exactly that goal.  It's not done yet, and its 
methods are not yet fully developed.  But neither would your new 
"joint" project be, for a very long time.

Wikipedia is also far from complete, far from containing "the sum 
of all human knowledge".  But that doesn't create a need to start 
entirely new encyclopedia projects.  It only means more 
contributors are needed in the existing Wikipedia.


-- 
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se