We noticed recently that we spend a fair amount of time talking about the joys of cleaning your data and inputting files into BiblioShare, but not about the creative and clever ways to use that data. That’s why we've begun this new BiblioShare in Eight series, where we search out highly imaginative ways to use BiblioShare, so we can highlight its many possible uses and why clean, correct, and descriptive data is so needed.
Our first interviewee is the former data administrator at House of Anansi, who has now joined the tech world and is taking bit of publishing with her. Andrea Lacson, developer and former Tech Forum speaker, has taken her passions and turned them into Diverse Lit, a service that is in the early stages of addressing a publishing need: Discoverability of diverse books.
1. What is the goal of your project?
A few years ago, I was struggling to find books that featured Filipinx characters, or books that were written by Filipinx authors. After a period of Googling, I was only able to find one recently written book that I wanted to read, In the Country by Mia Alvar. It took me so long that I decided that I wanted to create this project to help others who were struggling to find stories like their own.
2. What technologies/frameworks are you using?
This project is completed in React, a programming language backed by Facebook. They created this language to be very reusable, so instead of coding one user's profile millions of times, they only had to code it once. I created this in React so I could use that reusability for each book page.
3. How much effort was involved in creating Diverse Lit?
I created the bare bones of the project in just under a week, but have been slowly adding more features as time permits.
4. What are your expectations for this project? Are you going to continue working on it?
I'd love to add more filters, grow the book database, and clean it up a little more. Nothing is perfect at the moment, and it's still a very much beta project. But I've received so much positive feedback for this project already. People really want a website like this to exist.
I would love to continue working on it, as time permits. At the same time, I wouldn't be able to do this alone. I can only speak for my own communities. I don't know other communities as well as my own, and am not as qualified to discern which books are representative of others' cultures.
5. What do you wish was available in standards and/or technologies?
Clean data! Metadata is so important. Since this project pulls metadata from the BiblioShare APIs, it's interesting to see how different publishers send their data. Many books by authors from underrepresented communities come from publishers with less resources, which means that the data is not as standardized or as detailed, which makes it more difficult for me to put it into the book database. There are so many barriers for underrepresented authors that we can't even see. Other than that, having more diversity data overall would be greatly welcomed.
6. What was your biggest takeaway working on this project?
There are so many amazing books from different communities. You just have to know where to look.
7. What was the most fun to work on?
Everything! It was so great to work on a project that I'm passionate about. Time passes so quickly.
8. Most importantly, what are you reading right now?
I've just started Severance by Ling Ma! So far, so good.
A big thank you to Andrea for answering our questions and continuing to do amazing things for the publishing industry. We can’t wait until this project is complete, and we’re happy to be a part of a solution to an industry need.
If you would like to be featured in this series, or know someone who should be, please get in touch with the BiblioShare team.
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