Open Library is an open project with open software (Infobase), open data, open documentation, open site, and open invitation for collaboration. Its aim is to achieve โOne web page for every book ever publishedโ. Another goal of the Open Library is to create a new metadata schema for bibliographic records. To achieve it, the project has a working group for discussion regarding the metadata (beyond MARC data) to be included in the records. It is a project of the non-profit
Internet Archive that was funded in part by a grant from the
California State Libraryโ. It hosts 23,285,112 books including 1,064,822 with full-text. One can search millions of book records, narrow results by facet, and search across the full text by going through the site. The records that are already included in the site come from various libraries, publishers and repositories. The projectg further to be successful will need a) Millions of book records; b) Database infrastructure that can handle huge amounts of data (with periodic updates to Infobase); c) A wiki interface for collaboration; d) A blog to keep the user aware of what is going on; e) LIS professional from all over the world who can contribute their time, effort, and book data.
