I’m working on an ISBN database that fetches information from several other services, such as Hardcover.app, Google Books, and ISBNDB, merges that information, and return something more complete than using them alone. It also saves that information in the database for future lookups.

Mostly because I’m working on a personal library management service called Shelvica to solve my own problems[1], and none of those services provided all the information on a book. One might provide the series, the other might provide genres, and yet another might provide a cover with good dimensions, but none provided everything, so I decided to work on something of my own (called Librario).

While Shelvica is the focus, Librario could become its own thing in time, so I don’t mind the sidetracking.

I also plan on having a “ISBN Search” kind of website that feeds from that database as a way to let users search for information about books, which then feeds the service’s database, making it stronger for Shelvica.

I open source everything I make, but I’m still wondering if these will be open sourced or not. I’ll probably go with the EUPL 1.2 license if I do decide on open sourcing them.

[1]: My wife and I have a personal library with around 1800 books, but most applications for management are either focused on ebooks or choke with this many books. Libib is the exception, but I wanted a little more.

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ravenical 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Interesting! Have you looked into data from Anna (https://annas-archive.li/blog/all-isbns-winners.html)?

	▲	jamesponddotco 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Didn’t have the time yet, but it’s on my todo list. I have extractors for Google Books, Hardcover.app, and ISBNDB already working, and Amazon, Goodreads, and Anna’s Archive in the todo list. I do plan on including a link to the book on Anna’s Archive in the “ISBN Search” website. At least to the search page with the filters already filled.

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nbbaier a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to know more about this project and follow along! I've also had an itch of having a personal library app that's better than libib

	▲	jamesponddotco 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, I’d love to keep you in the loop. Send a message to the email on my profile and I’ll let you know once I have something ready for testing :)

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geuis 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hey I'd like to learn more about what you're doing. I'm working on a tangentially related service but focusing on audiobooks. One big stumbling block I ran into early on was trying to find something close to a unified ISBN datasource.

If you're up for it, shoot me an email at charles@geuis.com.

	▲	jamesponddotco 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’ll send you an email later today for sure!

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bwb 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to get updates on this and talk with you. My email is ben@bookdna.com

We are in the process of building Notion but for books (specifically aimed at your to-be-read list and book log): https://building.shepherd.com/roadmap/launch-our-tbr-app-to-...

Very interested to hear how it goes.

	▲	jamesponddotco 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sending you a message later today!

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kretaceous 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I need the search service so bad.

I attempted something like this because I wanted a good books search service which provided me at-a-glance information I needed from Storygraph & Goodreads. The main things I look for when I search a book is genres/Storygraph's "moods", number of pages, whether it's part of a series, rating across services & how much does it cost.

Could never make it work properly.

	▲	jamesponddotco 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The algorithm to decide what to merge is the hardest part, in my opinion, and very basic right now. Eventually, I wanna try doing something with machine learning. Definitely a fun thing to work on, though. Having a full time job and a baby to take care of make progress slow, but I should have the website ready soon. Shoot me an email and I can let you know when that happens.. email is on my profile.