svg_utils VS openlibrary

I have a hobby website where I can upload individual SVGs, and the server will combine these SVGs into a single file, which I can download and continue editing. For this I've been using this tool server side: https://github.com/btel/svg_utils, which is made for stacking SVGs for scientific publications, but it's not aware of Inkscape specific functions. I've just bumped into the issue that when I create two individual files which are using the same name (or ID) for a swatch (because one file is a modified copy of the other), the swatches will overwrite each other in the combined file. Also duplicate element IDs cause issues.

I looked first into svg_utils (https://github.com/btel/svg_utils) but was appalled at the dependencies. I still haven't even fully attempted a solution using it because I'd rather use anything else that is smaller.

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