Books pre ~1973 don't have ISBN. And goodreads covers far more material than just modern material.
The current Goodreads importer makes a big/unfortunate tradeoff of trying to have something which works for the majority of material on people's goodreads lists.
It doesn't preclude further efforts -- Open Library knows about millions of books that don't have ISBN. So if anyone wants to help us improve our importer (or at least register their interest by creating an issue which calls out what other identifiers should be considered -- e.g. LOC, etc) that would be very helpful.
Thanks a lot. I learned something today. I knew of the ISBN issue, but didn't think of it.
Having some free time on my hands I will take a look in the next few days. Looking for an alternative to GR and for something that tickles my interests.
Books pre ~1973 don't have ISBN. And goodreads covers far more material than just modern material.
The current Goodreads importer makes a big/unfortunate tradeoff of trying to have something which works for the majority of material on people's goodreads lists.
It doesn't preclude further efforts -- Open Library knows about millions of books that don't have ISBN. So if anyone wants to help us improve our importer (or at least register their interest by creating an issue which calls out what other identifiers should be considered -- e.g. LOC, etc) that would be very helpful.
# To open an issue:
https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/new/ch...
# Here's the code for the importer
https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/blob/892adebb...