Openbook WordPress Plugin

OpenBook WordPress Plugin John Miedema One Big Library Unconference Toronto, Ontario June 27, 2008

Overview
Impetus: Amazon
Comparison of Catalogues
Technical Overview
Future Enhancements
Code is Political

Impetus: Amazon
Book reviews. Often indie titles.
Common practice of linking to Amazon
Random House asked to link to their publisher’s website. Made sense.
Amazon: will only sell print-on-demand books printed by its own service
Links = coin on the web. Need an easy alternative to Amazon.

Comparison of the Catalogues
Amazon: Fewest titles, closed source, closed data
LibraryThing: Closed source, open data, social data, private
WorldCat: Most titles, closed data, social data but not used, not-for-profit

I Picked Open Library
WorldCat ranked highest by straight count
Initial impetus: often review indie titles not in WorldCat, cannot add titles, as closed as Amazon
Open Library: open source, open data, not-for-profit = about as library-like as you can get. Hence “OpenBook”
Stable?

Technical Overview
WordPress: good for book reviewers, library websites, open source
Open Library API: querystring http:// openlibrary .org/ api /get?key=/b/OL3674869M
PHP: file_get_contents , gets data, replaced by curl because forbidden by some servers
json_decode , easy to parse data, requires PHP 5.2

Technical Overview - 2
Cover images: Not in data, standard format, alternate in data
Publisher link: Not available by API, added as an argument
Hook into WordPress: make a “filter” function, replace tags with HTML [openbook]ISBN#[/openbook]
Upload to WordPress server => thousand hits, >100 downloads

Sample

Future Enhancements
Remove dependency on json_decode
Insert multiple anywhere in text
Search by other numbers, not just ISBN
Choice of data source
Internationalization
Rich data: Open Library has scans

Code is Political
Impetus: Alternative to Amazon’s monopoly, support independent pressses/ideas = very library
Can private company do this for libraries?
Can not-for-profit do this?
Is OCLC really not-for-profit?
Is Open Library ready? Adding titles.
Does it matter who does this?

Sources
Amazon Muscles Print-On-Demand Services http://www. techcrunch .com/2008/03/27/ amazon -muscles-print-on-demand-services/
Small Publishers Feel Power of Amazon’s ‘Buy’ Button http://www. nytimes .com/2008/06/16/business/media/16amazon.html
Open Library http:// openlibrary .org
OpenBook download page at WordPress (open source): http:// wordpress .org/extend/ plugins / openbook -book-data/
My OpenBook page: http:// johnmiedema .ca/ openbook - wordpress - plugin /

Contact
Blog: http:// johnmiedema .ca
Mail: mail@ johnmiedema .ca

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Openbook WordPress Plugin

by johnmiedema on Nov 27, 2008

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Openbook WordPress Plugin — Presentation Transcript