Hello everyone,

Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.

Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.

To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.

Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.

Now here’s the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.

From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?

TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)

  • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.ukEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    With Anna’s Archive there’d be issues of the legality of linking to it but BookWyrm does provide OpenLibrary links where available.

    Ultimately, someone could create a more piracy focused fork of BookWyrm and start their own instance but I think it would be problematic for the core project to bake it in and open anyone running an instance up to legal issues. I suppose there’s nothing stopping Anna’s Archive from doing it to provide a more social interface to their database.

  • Fluid@aussie.zoneEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    Anything that helps bookwyrm grow its knowledge library of books (missing a LOT of books that goodreads has) is a good idea. I fear however that combining anything which points people to where to pirate the book might not help the popularity/reputation of bookwyrm as a good OS alt to goodreads.

  • simple@lemm.ee
    English
    41·
    2 years ago

    Isn’t Anna’s Library piracy? Bookwyrm is just a book tracker ala goodreads which only has metadata, providing links to free downloads of books is illegal and would put them under fire.

    If you want a legal alternative to what you’re describing, check out OpenLibrary. You can borrow books there and use it as a Goodreads alternative.

  • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    Never heard of Anna’s Archive before. Not sure how I feel about the prospect of piracy in the fediverse explicitly.

    • maxprime@lemmy.mlEnglish
      61·
      2 years ago

      I mean, that’s the cool thing about federation. Some instances could adopt this and some could reject it.

      • sabreW4K3@lemmy.tfEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        Illegalities are a boon for everything they need. They push and accelerate development and that’s never a bad thing. But the flipside of that is the negative stigma. It would be wonderful to have Anna’s Archive without it being a thing for that reason. We always want the growth of the Fediverse and a giant project like Anna’s Archive may be what we need to inspire more projects to join until such a point that there’s a counterbalance to mastodon.

  • Jay@lemmy.caEnglish
    31·
    2 years ago

    Oh wow, they even have the book that was written about my great, great, great grandparents.

    I’ve already bought the actual book but it’s nice to have a pdf of it as well.

    • PropaGandalf@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      I don’t see much of a difference to Goodreads. You will find most of the features you already use on bookwyr including book lists, reading goals and book info. It’s up to you to decide if you want to sgare these info with everyone, just your friends or keep them for yourself. There are a lot of lists that are public too so don’t worry about that.

    • maxprime@lemmy.mlEnglish
      0·
      2 years ago

      Could you get into BookWyrm if it no longer required an account to view books? And if metadata was collected through AA it would likely be accurate while also running on FOSS.