The Open Library

On Monday was announced a demo of The Open Library, a new project from the Internet Archive. The Open Library is a wiki-based card catalog of books that seeks to be "a product of the people: letting them create and curate its catalog, contribute to its content, participate in its governance, and have full, free access to its data." Its potential as one of the most important book tools ever created cannot be overstressed.

In their impressive User Interface document, they outline the myriad features future users of the library will have access to, including metadata editing, tagging, reviewing and ranking, searching, creating book lists, annotating texts, and even printing a POD copy. But for all that, the library has a fundamental flaw in its design: Manifestations.

In the demo version of the site, when you search for a title, the interface returns a list of every version of that title ever published. In their built-in example of a search for Tom Sawyer, that's a list of 130 books, most just different editions of the original. So as a user looking to tag or review the work, which version do you click on? And what are the chances future users also looking for Tom Sawyer will click on the same edition and see your review?

To be a truly functional and universal catalog of literature (which is what this has the potential to be) The Open Library must be built around identifying and describing the core text, rather than the text's numerous manifestations.