Brugge Blog

I’m going to guess that about 99% of links to books that I come across are links to their page on Amazon.com. There is certainly a wealth of information about the book there, but Amazon’s not trying to educate me about it, they’re trying to sell it to me.

A couple of years ago I came across isbndb.com, when it seemed like an interesting concept to have an ISBN database, but there wasn’t really any way to get at the data. Then I saw a recent news release about their remote access API and it gives me hope that it won’t wither away. The site seems like a library catalog cross indexed with online bookstores, but with the emphasis on providing book info (library MARC data, publisher data, etc) and cross references to related works.

I’m still not sure exactly how best to use it personally, but I like it as an endpoint for book links. An Amazon without the ads (although also without reviews.)

While it has a couple of million books indexed now, there’s still work to be done to bring out more of its potential. For instance, I really like the “Books on the Same Shelf” feature, that lists books that you find in proximity to that book if you were at the library, but doing a couple of searches on books I’ve read didn’t bring back much. There is probably much more that could be done with the data through the API that will just take some imagination (and a more filled in database) to help it flourish.