extensivelybooks

ExtensivelyBooks is a digital library project that aims to provide a comprehensive, interoperable catalog of books. It aggregates bibliographic metadata and, where permissible, full texts from libraries, publishers, and digitization programs. The project emphasizes broad coverage across languages and genres and prioritizes open data, reusable licenses, and machine-readable metadata to facilitate discovery and reuse.

History and scope: Initiated in the early 2010s by a coalition of academic libraries and open-access advocates, ExtensivelyBooks launched a public beta in 2013 and has since expanded to include tens of thousands of titles. It adheres to bibliographic standards such as Dublin Core and MARC 21 and uses schema.org for web interoperability. Access to full texts varies by license, with public-domain and open-licensed works fully accessible; others may be available via library systems or restricted access.

Features: The platform offers advanced search with facets by language, author, year, and subject; edition history and relationships; citation export; and APIs for programmatic access and data downloads. Metadata is maintained with versioning to reflect corrections and additions, supporting researchers and developers.

Governance and reception: ExtensivelyBooks operates as a collaborative, not-for-profit effort involving libraries, archives, and research institutions, with community-driven curation. It is used by scholars, librarians, and educators for discovery and analysis. Challenges include uneven coverage across languages and licensing variability; ongoing work focuses on expanding partnerships and enriching multilingual metadata.