Dear Cathal,

Maybe a p2p interface for information exchange can be realised.
It would help when it comes to hard to trace information or pictures for books. Why should 1 spend hours to complete
manual input if another user all ready did the same for the same object ? By using a p2p interface which can only connect
to other users of alexandria it would diminish a lot of work and stress I think.

just my 2 cents,

Erwin

Date: 2009-11-26 18:05
Sender: Cathal Mc Ginley

I have thought that there must be a great deal of duplicated
effort around manual entry of details, but I've never considered
the p2p idea before. I have no idea what sort of technology would
support this type of effort, and I also suspect that there are
too few users of the program to make it effective in p2p mode.

However, I have thought that a web-service could accomplish much
the same task. There are a few copyright-related concerns, although
I believe sharing informational meta-data should be well covered
by "fair use", I'm not sure about even low-resolution
cover images.

That's why, at the moment, adding support to grab data from
pre-existing websites & services for sharing meta-data and
cover images (LibraryThing is the obvious choice) is my preferred
option.

I'll leave this request open, though, since it might prove useful
at a later stage.