openlibrary VS zotero

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.

Maybe try Zotero[1]. There are many addons which can do what you need.

[1]https://www.zotero.org/

And next time, you use a real literature management program like zotero (some university libraries offer classes, there is a r/zotero, etc) or jabref to create a proper bibtex file with the references. It is not that difficult, and keeps you sane (esp. if a paper has to be formatted for a different publisher). See e.g. learnlatex.

Zotero | Remote | Full-Time or Part-Time | https://www.zotero.org

Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.

We're looking for a JavaScript developer to work on Zotero "translators" — the pieces of code that let people click a button in their browser toolbar on any webpage and save high-quality metadata and files to their Zotero libraries. If you like web scraping, APIs, data formats, and exploring sites in the browser devtools, this would be up your alley. As a core Zotero developer, you'll also have the ability to work across Zotero's vast ecosystem and help shape the future of the project.

This is an open-ended contract role that can scale up and down in hours based on availability and workload.

https://www.zotero.org/jobs

Zotero is your answer, it even auto generates your citations.

https://www.zotero.org/

Apparently there are plugins for Logseq and Obsidian as well.

Zotero - Price: Free Free and open-source reference manager that helps you collect, organize, and cite your research sources.

I use the free and open source Zotero which I think you'd find very calibre-like and manage notes and concept linking with org-roam in emacs.

If you can't hold the urge to know, you can check on the Zotero web library if all of your things are still there

Resources: ZOTERO. Zotero is a free (you can pay to get more storage), open-source citation manager with optional browser plugins. IT WILL FORMAT CITATIONS FOR YOU. (sometimes you have to edit them, but most of the time it can pull metadata and format things correctly on its own). You can sort your references into folders or with tags, read and annotate PDF copies on your computer or in a mobile app, and make notes - which I used to keep track of specific quotations I wanted to use.

You can also use online resources like The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences, that I think is mostly free or the Handbook of Archaeological Sciences which I think is also mostly free. If you can't get a hold of those things you can also email the authors/editors and they might send you a free copy or look them up on Academia.edu and see if they have a free version. Also, if you don't already, use Google Scholar, it's the best resource for finding free articles and topics to read. It's also never too early to start using something like Zotaro, Mendeley, or Endnote to keep track of your readings and help you with citations/references in papers. You can literally download the citation, import it into one of those systems and it automatically formats your referencing.