The book data that I wish was more accessible was bibliographic data. I wish there was a cheap ISBN API (cheap enough for an individual to afford) that I could use to look up all of the data for my book from just a barcode scan. I know there are some API providers for that, but the plans are clearly meant for big users and not for someone who just wants to use it a couple hundred times.
This would be something the Library of Congress should run, or maybe one of the university library consortia, like the formerly-named Committee on Institutional Cooperation, (which has renamed itself the 'Big Ten Academic Alliance', because football - https://btaa.org/library/Libraries )
The Open Library project https://openlibrary.org/developers has a free ISBN API. I used it along with tesseract OCR and a webcam to build a database of my physical books (218 total). I never had any rate limiting issues.
I'm also aware of the Internet Archive's Open Library (initiated by Aaron Swartz, see below), and some Wikidata efforts based largely on ISBN. And of course the almost wholly useless HathiTrust.
And ... searching "OCLC" in the HN archives turns up numerous other references, including Aaron Swartz (miss you, guy), "Stealing your Library: The OCLC Powergrab":
yeah. why i left the "library industry" and now work 'for the man'.
the library industry should have embraced open source in the 90s but they just never "got it". they seem to think they just need to be involved in some hyper expensive vendor projects and somehow that will bring them validation.
i worked in this tiny library with a few ten thousands books and they were paying for system that used oracle as the Database. so basically they were paying for oracle. this was 20 years ago.
then there is JSTOR and the whole Aaron Swartz thing. JSTOR acted really inappropriately
like i feel really bad about what has happened to libraries over the past 20 years, with funding cut to the bone. but they kind of did it to themselves by thinking that "serving the public" means shoveling the publics money to proprietary vendors for no apparent reason. like OCLC has no right to take information generated by public institutions that are almost entirely funded by local taxpayers and somehow claim ownership of that information, and act like a monopolistic for profit corporation.
there are a lot of very innovating library people doing stuff like maker spaces and kids education despite all the hardships but.... this revolution has not made it to the 'library industry'.
NB: JSTOR, to its credit, Larry Lessig says "great credit" (<https://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bul...>), didn't pursue prosecution of Swartz. M.I.T., however certainly did (also noted by Lessig). From Abelson's report, commissioned by MIT:
If the Review Panel is forced to highlight just one issue for reflection, we would choose to look to the MIT administration’s maintenance of a “neutral” hands-off attitude that regarded the prosecution as a legal dispute to which it was not a party. This attitude was complemented by the MIT community’s apparent lack of attention to the ruinous collision of hacker ethics, open-source ideals, questionable laws, and aggressive prosecutions that was playing out in its midst. As a case study, this is a textbook example of the very controversies where the world seeks MIT’s insight and leadership.
A friend of Aaron Swartz stressed in one of our interviews that MIT will continue to be at the cutting edge in information technology and, in today’s world, challenges like those presented in Aaron Swartz’s case will arise again and again. With that realization,
“Neutrality on these cases is an incoherent stance. It’s not the right choice for a tough
leader or a moral leader.”
The careers of Ortiz and Heymann (DoJ) have suffered somewhat: Heymann left the DoJ, Ortiz's ambitions for higher office (reputedly she'd had interest in the Mass. governorship) were thwarted. The judge remains on the US District Court of Massachussetts.
This would be something the Library of Congress should run, or maybe one of the university library consortia, like the formerly-named Committee on Institutional Cooperation, (which has renamed itself the 'Big Ten Academic Alliance', because football - https://btaa.org/library/Libraries )