I mentioned The Open Library here at fade theory back in January 2006. But it’s worth mentioning again, since it doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of attention. “The Open Library website was created by the Internet Archive to demonstrate a way that books can be represented online. The vision is to create free web access to important book collections from around the world.” Scott McLemee interviewed one of the people behind The Open Library, Aaron Swartz:

Q: What will Open Library offer that you can’t already find online? What was missing from the existing array of online book-data resources – WorldCat, Google Books, Amazon, etc. – that makes it worthwhile to create a new one?

A: As the kind of person who reads Intellectual Affairs (an academophile?), I’m often looking for interesting books on an obscure topic. I can look on Amazon, but its coverage of out-of-print books is pretty poor. (In my experience, most of the really interesting books are out of print.) I can search an academic library or WorldCat, but the quality of data is pretty weak — you can get basic bibliographic info, but no reviews and weak search and a painful interface and most require a subscription.

So I wanted to build a site where one could more easily find those hidden great books, by combining all the data we have on them in one place and letting the people who love them go back and annotate and highlight them.

McLemee also notes that Mr. Swartz is 21. Right now I’m listening to a lovely album by pianist Adriel Gomez-Monsur, who was born in 1989. All these young, successful types are little reminders of my misspent time.