In search of Cultural Identifiers
Post categories: innovation
| 13:46 UK time, Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Image: "A Rainbow of Books" by Dawn Indigo on flickr.
Late last year we got quite excited about Open Library. Using the open word always seems to tick our boxes. We chatted about the prospect of a comprehensive, coherent BBC books site heavily interlinked with BBC programmes. Every dramatisation of a novel, every poetry reading, every author interview and profile, every play linked to / from programmes. The prospect of new user journeys from programme episode to book to author to poem and back to episode still seems enticing. We started to wonder if we could use Open Library as the backbone of this new service in the same way we use MusicBrainz open data as the backbone of /music.
Unfortunately when we looked more closely an obvious problem came to light.
Open Libary is based on Amazon book data and Amazon is based on products.
Correction 16.01.09: OpenLibrary is NOT based on Amazon data (see Tim's comment). For now it models books in a similar fashion to Amazon (as publications/products not cultural artifacts). OpenLibrary are looking to enhance this model to allow grouping of publications into works which is fantastic news. If you can contribute code or knowledge I'd encourage you to do so.
And the BBC isn't all that interested in products. Neither are users.
Read more and comment at BBC Radio Labs blog.
Michael Smethurst is Information Architect, A&Mi, BBC Future Media & Technology
