An interview with Open Library

Open Library is a new online tool for finding information about books – even (perhaps especially) for titles that are out-of-print, scarce, or likely to find one reader per decade, if even that. It is, so to speak, a catalog with benefits. If a text is available in digital format, there is a link. you to it. Citations and excerpts from reviews will be available. Likewise, cross-references to other works on related topics. A user of Open Library can see the cover of the book and, in some cases, search the contents.

The project is still very much under development. Force of habit makes us speak of the pre-optimal version of a site as its “beta” version. With Open Library, given its ambitions, chances are that “gamma” is probably more accurate.

But here’s an encouraging sign: The basic framework is being established by my appallingly accomplished young friend Aaron Swartz — who, at the age of 21, has already helped create RSS (that was in his early teens), published a couple of computer-science papers, and developed Infogami, a system enabling his digitally clueless elders to set up their own websites...

Read the interview here.