There's lots of interesting work being done on this. It is, fundamentally, an ontological problem: What is a book? Is it an edition? A print run? Do translations count? Large print versions? Parodies? etc. While there are various standards in place (ISBN for something like editions, FRBR for various levels of generality XISBN to try to pull together multiple editions), the problem remains.
E.g., if you want to link to a book, what do you link to? <br><br>One of the most promising efforts to aggregate book information is OpenLibrary.org. It wants to build home pages for every book. At the home page you'll find links to all the different editions and versions, to reviews and commentary, etc. All of the information it gathers will be open. They have something like 10M book entries already, but they're just at the beginning of figuring out how to stitch it all together. Plus, they're looking for more libraries willing to upload their catalogs.
<br><br>I'm personally also very interested in LibraryThing.com. FreeBase has what seems like a useful (and extensible) set of book metadata. But there's _lots_ going on here, and I'm sure many of you know far more about it than I.
<br><br>Best,<br><br>David W.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Dec 6, 2007 12:11 PM, Samuel Rose <<a href="mailto:samuel.rose@gmail.com">samuel.rose@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
An interesting discussion.<br><br>I have to agree with the assertion that many, many books will not be digitized into "e-books" any time soon. Although, I do think it is plausible that a majority of books could be digitized eventually, if enough people care to do it. (Wait until the software and hardware to scan in books become very cheap, and then people will be doing it in their homes).
<br><br>This subject also has me thinking about some interesting possibilities with digitized meta-data *about* print books. This could be massively useful if structured right. I think about this also when I visit libraries doing research. Sure, libraries have catalogues of "what relates to what" with meta-data, and so on. But, what if you could also access this data from your friends, and colleagues in your areas of study, maybe on a cell phone while at the library? Maybe you'd enter an ISBN number in, and the book, as an "object", would have many, many items of meta-data, and connection to other "objects" attached to it. The building blocks for this exist, and some people I am sure have come very close to building this, but a usable system would be awesome to have..
<br><br><br><br></blockquote></div><br>-- <br>David Weinberger<br>Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center<br>blog: <a href="http://www.JohoTheBlog.com">www.JohoTheBlog.com</a><br>new book: <a href="http://www.EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com">
www.EverythingIsMiscellaneous.com</a><br>mail: <a href="mailto:self@evident.com">self@evident.com</a>