Open Library is an online project intended to create “one web page for every book ever published”. Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive

Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

 and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library

California State Library

The California State Library collects, preserves, generates and disseminates a wide array of information. It was founded in 1850 by the California State Legislature. Today, it is the central reference and research library for state government and the Legislature. The California State Library...

 and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.

Books for the blind and dyslexic

The website was relaunched adding ADA compliance and offering over 1 million modern and older books to the print disabled in May 2010.

Digital lending library

Tens of thousands of modern books were made available from 4 and then 150 libraries and publishers for digital lending.

Book database

Its book information is collected from the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

, other libraries, and Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

, as well as from user contributions through a Wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a website that allows the creation and editing of any number of interlinked web pages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor. Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used collaboratively by multiple users. Examples include...

-like interface. If books are available in digital form, a button labeled "Read" appears next to its catalog listing. Links to where books can be purchased or borrowed are also provided.

There are different entities in the database:

• authors
• works (which are the aggregate of all books with the same title and text)
• editions (which are different publications of the corresponding works)

Open Library claims to have 6 million authors and 20 million books (not works), and about one million Public Domain books are available as digitized books.

Technical

Open Library began in 2006 with Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz

Aaron Swartz is an American programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist. He is best known in programming circles for co-authoring the RSS 1.0 specification...

 as the original engineer and leader of Open Library's technical team. The project is now led by George Oates.

The site was redesigned and relaunched in May 2010. Its codebase is on GitHub

Github

GitHub is a web-based hosting service for software development projects that use the Git revision control system. GitHub offers both commercial plans and free accounts for open source projects...

. The site uses Infobase, its own database framework based on PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL, often simply Postgres, is an object-relational database management system available for many platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, MS Windows and Mac OS X. It is released under the PostgreSQL License, which is an MIT-style license, and is thus free and open source software...

, and Infogami, its own Wiki engine

Wiki software

Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, i.e., a website that allows users to create and collaboratively edit web pages via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers...

 written in Python

Python (programming language)

Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...

. The source code to the site is published under the Affero General Public License

Affero General Public License

The Affero General Public License, often abbreviated as Affero GPL and AGPL , refers to two distinct, though historically related, free software licenses:...

, version 3.

See also

• Online Computer Library Center - creator of WorldCat
  WorldCat
  WorldCat is a union catalog which itemizes the collections of 72,000 libraries in 170 countries and territories which participate in the Online Computer Library Center global cooperative...
  
  
• LibraryThing
  LibraryThing
  LibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by individuals, authors, libraries and publishers....
  
  
• Google Book Search
  Google Book Search
  Google Books is a service from Google that searches the full text of books that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition, and stored in its digital database. The service was formerly known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October...
  
  
• Amazon.com
  Amazon.com
  Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
  
  
• OPAC
  OPAC
  An Online Public Access Catalog is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries...