In search of Cultural Identifiers
Post categories: innovation
| 13:46 UK time, Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Image: "" by on flickr.
Late last year we got quite excited about . Using the open word always seems to tick our boxes. We chatted about the prospect of a comprehensive, coherent ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ books site heavily interlinked with ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ programmes. Every dramatisation of a novel, every poetry reading, every author interview and profile, every play linked to / from programmes. The prospect of new user journeys from programme episode to book to author to poem and back to episode still seems enticing. We started to wonder if we could use Open Library as the backbone of this new service in the same way we use open data as the backbone of /music.
Unfortunately when we looked more closely an obvious problem came to light.
Open Libary is based onbook data and Amazon is based on products.
Correction 16.01.09: OpenLibrary is NOT based on Amazon data (see Tim's comment). For now it models books in a similar fashion to Amazon (as publications/products not cultural artifacts). which is fantastic news. If you can I'd encourage you to do so.
And the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ isn't all that interested in products. Neither are users.
Read more and comment at ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio Labs blog.
Michael Smethurst is Information Architect, A&Mi, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Future Media & Technology
