- There is a bounty for improving the visualization[0].
[0]: https://software.annas-archive.gl/AnnaArchivist/annas-archiv...
- Here's my article on how I built it - and also an instance hosted on GitHub pages if the AA domain is blocked for you: https://phiresky.github.io/blog/2025/visualizing-all-books-i...
Happy to answer questions as always :)
by shevy-java
4 subcomments
- One problem I see with annas archive is that there is a tendency towards older books. Now I do understand this for many reasons, but ... I recently read a book about steel construction in 1932, just for curiousity. I wanted to find a more recent one - did not even have to be, say, 1990 or 2000 or some such, but I simply could not find any (well, perhaps english speaking, but this is also a problem in that non-english languages are VERY underpresented in general).
I hope they can fix this in the long run. We need to preserve digital information on a much broader basis.
by comrade1234
3 subcomments
- I got burned buying a trilogy with a good rating on goodreads. I only read the first 1.5 books and didn't bother after that.
It sucked and when I looked again later it had a more relevant rating. I think the initial score was gamed by bots.
So now I download from Anna's archive and if it's as good as I expected based on ratings then I pay for it, which I've done most recently for Children of Time.
Thankfully I live somewhere where I can download legally.
- Blocked in Germany by CUII https://cuii.info/ueber-uns/
- I remember the story of it being made, and I seem to even remember there was some very generous bounty attached, but I never got the point of it. I mean, honestly, ISBN is a pretty problematic thing on its own, especially today, when self-publishing is common, and especially for a web-library that is collecting scans of everything somewhat notable that ever was out there. But even accepting it as a main entity, because that's what we've got right now, what does this visualization achieve? What does it show? You cannot really find a book using it, I mean, any more specifically than "some random book probably in a given language". I was kinda surprised when this visualization was declared a winner of that particular bounty/contest.
by FrustratedMonky
0 subcomment
- This is really nice.
When zoomed all the way, it is a book shelf. Totally un-expected, nice touch.
- How much can you zoom it? Yes.
- It's very strange to me how small Spanish is there.
Second language in the world by native speakers, piracy being effectively legal in Spain (non commercially), and so on.
- A lot of errors like "resolvePublishers(978-0): SyntaxError: The string did not match the expected pattern." are blocking view on mobile…
- Is there a similar one for IP?
- This makes it feel like there aren't many books in the world
- The bookshelf is nice, but I'd love to be able to read the titles more easily - maybe rotate by 90 degrees?
by implode7569
0 subcomment
- Feels like a market map for books. Very cool.
- this is really cool!
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