openlibrary VS launcher

I'd like to make a pitch for Openlibrary.org the free online library from Internet Archive that includes a fulltext search of millions of books.

I've been volunteering with them on and off for several years and it's always a lovely experience. Their backend is python and frontend mostly from python templates and some Vue for librarian stuff.

Every Tuesday they have a call on Zoom that everyone is welcome to join to share what they're working on, ask for help, and generally chat a bit. It's a great time.

Depending on what you're interested in there's a lot to do from helping build import pipelines for more book entries, writing bots to cleanup data, Performance improvements, better documenting public APIs, etc

I'm currently slowly working on a wikidata integration for their authors page. We also could use some help upgrading to Vue 3, mentors for Google summer of code would be helpful, find of ML projects needing help, moving away from old jQuery libraries, etc.

They can be quite responsive to PRs too like I blogged about here: https://blog.rayberger.org/idea-to-merged-in-less-than-30-mi...

For example, here's a small issue that could use some help on the python side: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/8928

OpenLibrary does provide search access to full texts. For example: https://openlibrary.org/search/inside?q=%22institutional+thi...

It is open source and they're always looking for contributors. I think they'd especially welcome help improving search!

https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/

Check out https://openlibrary.org. You can search ´library science’, librarian’, etc, and something should come up. Just select the ‘ebooks’ option to search for items within the collection. And you can narrow the search by subject, etc.

Right now I'm in the middle of the chicken and the egg problem where we don't have enough authors cataloging their publications and b/c of that obviously readers are not interested in using the site.

I've gone back and forth with taking Open Libray's [0] catalog as that would at least flesh out our collection of books but then I'd have to deal with verifying authors to accounts so they can access their books. Which sounds like a major headache and also just defeats the concept of building a community.

Since this is really a weekend project, I'm just going to keep building the tools out to perfection and hope people will trickle in over time.

Luckily for me I just want to write, so the tools I'm building are exactly what works for my writing goals and I think overtime others will find the same value.

[0] https://openlibrary.org

Here's one: https://openlibrary.org/

The Internet Archive runs what they call the Open Library, which is a unique concept on the traditional library. You can sign-up with minimal details and digitally check out many scanned books from libraries all over the world. The only caveat is that almost all of the books are older editions - ones that would be impossible to find locally. It's great if you're looking for old routes, a look back in time, details about obscure areas, or just prefer to read a book rather than browse AllTrails. Please do still support local authors whenever you can as guidebooks take hundreds of hours to create and are slowly going extinct.

Repo : https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary

I want to clarify that I'm a non-US citizen, so accessing physical copies from US libraries or buying it from Amazon might not be feasible for me. To give you some context, my personal research was guided by the wiki section of r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH (https://www.reddit.com/r/FREEMEDIAHECKYEAH/wiki/reading/). I've conducted research using various online resources, including the Ebook & Open Source/Access Libraries such as Sci-Hub, Z-Library, Library Genesis, Anna’s Archive, and PDF Drive. Additionally, I've checked Torrent Search Engines like The Pirate Bay and BTDigg. Moreover, I've searched in Internet Archive and its Open Library but again I had no luck. However, I haven't yet explored software-based libraries. Finally I've looked into the Ebay if anyone had the particular book but it looks like both the versions are quite rare, because the book was meant to be only for Pharmarcist and especially for American ones.

A lot of Flash games got archived over on Bluemaxima

Tales of Crevan. You can play it with Flashpoint.

Za ovu tvoju nisam igrao nista slicno nazalost, mozes da probas da skines flashpoint pa malo da isfiltriras pretragu i probas da nadjes tako

https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ You more or less just download and install and it asks if you want to install all the games otherwise you download on a case by case basis

If you can remember that the word truck was in the name then you can try to download Flashpoint, write "truck" in the search bar and see if you can find something there.

Since flash is gone its gotten harder to play the game online. I recommend https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ Flashpoint since it is the restored original flash experience. You do have to download flashpoint but it is free, easy and there's tons of other saved flash games too. There are remakes out there but none will be identical to the original, which you get by using flashpoint.

https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/downloads/ you can download it from here, use the Infinity version since it's just the basic things.