Bringing the power of books to the fediverse
Aye mateys, I wanted to share this with you as you may be interested in a discussion on having annas-archive linked to the fedi.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/9006151
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)
I think any official integration wouldn’t be smart. Working on interoperability and a plugin to link them that way would be far smarter. This guy likes decentralization but wants to combine two very different concepts and products lol. I get it though and I love that idea. The other thread also mentions open library which is a legal version of what op posted
I like OP's idea but I wonder about the legality of it and how it might be used against BookWyrm by private entities. Interoperability/plugins that act as middle-men + open library seems like the way.
Or just use the api for retrieving the books info and a link to annas archive if you want to see more (or download). Officially bookwyrm would provide no direct download links only redirect to annas archive if the user wants to see more. If you combine this with OpenLibrary this would hopefully dillute the piracy concerns.