[bksvol-discuss] Re: Question.

Well, Open Library is a project that purports to be trying to make a web page for every book that has been published in the history of humanity. They are primarily a catalog, but they have other uses like, for example, more accessible books than Bookshare. They get their catalog entries from various sources including libraries from around the world. They are a long way from listing every book that has ever been published yet, but they do already list millions of them. They have their catalog set up so that anyone who visits the site can edit the entries and add things like descriptions, but, unfortunately, most of their entries do not have a lot of information and at the rate they are going it might be a long time before they do. The value of the site is that if there is a book anywhere of a certain title or topic they can most likely let you know about it. To get more information, if there is not much there -- and that is the case with most of them -- you might have to look elsewhere. A couple of possibilities are Library Thing and Good Reads. If the book in question has a listing on either of those sites there is usually a link to it near the bottom of the Open Library page for that book. Look there and you will likely find a description. If the book is so obscure that it does not even have a description on one of those sites you might have to do some googling of the title. In fact, you just might find them on Google Books, but the descriptions there are kind of sparse too. If the book is in the public domain you might be able to download the whole thing at Project Gutenberg. For that matter, Open Library has pretty much everything that Gutenberg does and they can be downloaded from the Open Library site. Like I said, Open Library has more accessible books than Bookshare does. If you do a search for the phrase "accessible book" there you should get a listing of all the books they have that you can download the entire text of. That includes both books that came from Gutenberg and protected Daisy books. If it is a protected Daisy book anyone can download it, but you need to have a device with anNLS key on it to read them. In this particular search, though, I did not check whether these are accessible books or not and considering that I got 51 books out of millions they are probably not. So you will have to probably do some googling or check to see if the catalog pages have links to Good Reads or Library Thing. 
On 6/23/2012 9:13 PM, Dasha Radford wrote:
It seems that most of these don't have descriptions with them. Where do I look? Even if I click on the links it gives me some kind of strange comment then there is no description for this book can you help where do I look for descriptions. 
Thanks

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On Jun 23, 2012, at 8:59 PM, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx <mailto:rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
Here is the link to the Open Library results, but, like I said, they do not seem to be in the Bookshare collection: http://openlibrary.org/search?q=%22celtic+harp%22 
On 6/23/2012 8:49 PM, Dasha Radford wrote:
It's correct. I've used it before. I looked at the other link you sent as well. Thanks. 

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On Jun 23, 2012, at 8:40 PM, Roger Loran Bailey <rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx <mailto:rogerbailey81@xxxxxxx>> wrote:
I just went to Open Library and searched the phrase "Celtic harp" and got 51 hits. Most of them do seem to be exactly the kind of thing you are looking for. None of them seem to be in the Bookshare collection though. I suppose you need it too soon for a wish list request, but if you send a request to schoolbookrequest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:schoolbookrequest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> they just might do a rush job on it for you. By the way, that email address is from my imperfect memory. If I got it wrong will someone please correct me? 
On 6/23/2012 8:16 PM, Dasha Radford wrote:
Yes I did. Didn't see too much of anything when I put harp in just the plain search mostly fiction titles or authors names that had something like harp in them. Could never find anything that had to do with this. 

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On Jun 23, 2012, at 8:07 PM, Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Lissi is the expert on all things Celtic a,d Irish; I'll forward this to her incase she doesn't see it, and also I'll check the collectio. Did you check the collection, putting harp or Celtic in the title space in Advanced search, or even in plainSearch? 

    *From:* Dasha Radford <dasha95@xxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:dasha95@xxxxxxxxx>>
    *To:* Bookshare Volunteers <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>>
    *Sent:* Saturday, June 23, 2012 3:54 PM
    *Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Question.

    Hi guys,
    I realize this is somewhat off-topic but perhaps once I get
    to the point it will make more sense. I'm supposed to be
    writing a research paper for my teacher this summer and my
    topic is the Celtic Harp. Does anyone on here know if there
    are books either on bookshare or books in general that deal
    specifically with harps in history, harps in the Celtic
    culture, making, methods, and theory? If anyone has any
    suggestions contact me off list.
    Thanks,
    DR

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