The web archive ISBNdb.com was a popular item of Twitter today, billed as “IMDB for books” by literary blogger Edward Champion.
The website currently archives digital records for 4.2 million books, collected from 10 million different sources. For instance, this entry on the obscure title, “A master class in brand planning: the timeless works of Stephen King,” contains summaries, notes, classification, book comparison, subject listings, library holdings, and links to buy the book online.
Here’s more from the site: “ISBNdb.com gets the data in a unique way – it scans libraries all across the world for book information. The scanning is random and similar in a way to how general purpose web search engines scan web sites. Scanned results are then parsed and stored in a searcheable and browseable database that you see here on ISBNdb.com. An attempt is made at cross-indexing the database by author, publisher, category and so on. Cross indexing is still a work in progress and is likely to improve as the time goes on.”