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Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

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Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#11

Post by jamesponddotco »

cmaury wrote: post #9

Are you able to pull upcoming titles? All I want is a weekly/monthly list of books by authors I've ready which are coming out, and I've not been able to find it or to build it.

If the data is present in one of the extractors, yes, but I think only Amazon and similar stores keep this kind of data right now. We don't have a extractor for Amazon yet.

After v1.0.0 is out I plan to add the ability to add books manually to the database, at which point we'll be able to start improving the database without relying on third-party services.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#12

Post by jamesponddotco »

nmstoker wrote: post #10
jamesponddotco wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I'm seeing it, to be honest, but it looks interesting. I do plan on having an UI for Librario (built a few mockups yesterday[1][2][3]), and I think the idea is similar, but BookBrainz looks bigger in scope. I could add them as an extractor, I suppose :thinking: [1]: https://i.cpimg.sh/pexvlwybvbkzuuk8.png [2]: https://i.cpimg.sh/eypej9bshk2udtqd.png [3]: https://i.cpimg.sh/6iw3z0jtrhfytn2u.png

This is great - the service and that you're extending it and considering a UI. Personally I would go with option 2 as the colour from the covers beats the anaemic feel of 1 and it seems more original than the search with grid below of 3.

Glad you liked the idea!

Number two is what my wife and I prefer too, and likely what's going to be chosen in the end.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#13

Post by ksr »

jamesponddotco wrote: post #8
jamesponddotco wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to do so, just keep in mind that the demo server might be unstable and can break at any moment, haha. I wrote a Go SDK[1] for the service, maybe I'll try writing one in TypeScript tomorrow. [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~pagina394/librario-go

Created a ticket[1] to remind myself to work on this. [1]: https://todo.sr.ht/~pagina394/librario/22

Will keep an eye, thanks!

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#14

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Please ensure that your database keeps track of whence data was obtained, and when. It's exceptionally frustrating when automated data ingesting systems overwrite manually-corrected data with automatically-generated wrong data: keeping track of provenance is a vital step towards keeping track of authoritativeness.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#15

Post by krick »

Does it handle languages other than English? I remember trying out some APIs like that for some tasks, and while I managed to find titles in English somewhat successfully, any other languages (be it the original title, or a translation of some fairly well-known book) were basically inaccessible.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#16

Post by jamesponddotco »

krick wrote: post #15

Does it handle languages other than English? I remember trying out some APIs like that for some tasks, and while I managed to find titles in English somewhat successfully, any other languages (be it the original title, or a translation of some fairly well-known book) were basically inaccessible.

I only tested English and Brazilian Portuguese so far, and Brazilian Portuguese worked, with translator information included.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#17

Post by jamesponddotco »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #14

Please ensure that your database keeps track of whence data was obtained, and when. It's exceptionally frustrating when automated data ingesting systems overwrite manually-corrected data with automatically-generated wrong data: keeping track of provenance is a vital step towards keeping track of authoritativeness.

We don't support POST, PATCH, and whatnot yet so I didn't take that into account yet, but it's in the plans.

Still need to figure out how this will work, though.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#19

Post by jamesponddotco »

apublicfrog wrote: post #18

Wow. I don't have any use for this personally, but your post is really well presented, detailed and sourced. I hope it goes well!

Thanks! It's a compilation of several random comments I made for a few months, haha.

Re: Show HN: Librario, a book metadata API that aggregates G Books, ISBNDB, and more

#20

Post by fc417fc802 »

jamesponddotco wrote: post #16
krick wrote: post #15

Does it handle languages other than English? I remember trying out some APIs like that for some tasks, and while I managed to find titles in English somewhat successfully, any other languages (be it the original title, or a translation of some fairly well-known book) were basically inaccessible.

I only tested English and Brazilian Portuguese so far, and Brazilian Portuguese worked, with translator information included.

You're most likely to run into issues with non-latin languages. Particularly picograms and the associated schemes for how to interpret them in a context sensitive manner. Substring search for example is likely to be broken in my experience.
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