Open Book Genome Project: Planning Document - Google Docs

"Mission

To create an open, community-powered Book Genome Project which produces open standards, data, and services to enable deeper, faster and more holistic understanding of a book’s unique characteristics.

Background

In ~2003, Aaron Stanton co-founded a project called the Book Genome Project (based on Pandora's music genome project) to “identify, track, measure, and study the multitude of features that make up a book”. This taxonomic engine could be applied on a book to surface unique patterns and insights which predict its structure, themes, age-appropriateness, and even pace. The group behind the Book Genome Project used this technology to power a user-facing website called BookLamp to power book recommendations based on quantifiable similarities in their contents. The project was acquired by Apple circa 2014 along with its patents and discontinued.

Opportunity

Today, the world has at its fingertips a powerful non-profit, open-source project called OpenLibrary.org which enables book lovers to access more than 4 million readable books online through the Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending library program. Similar to Goodreads, Open Library serves as a catalog of 19 million book records which readers may use to discover recommendations and track books they want to read. Similar to BookLamp, Open Library has great potential to bring book insights to its audience of more than 3M international book lovers...."