[edlinfan]

This is a wonderful tool and goes a long way to scratch the "library itch" I've felt since the start of the pandemic. Projects like this make me very happy that I donated to IA this year, and I'd encourage anyone else who likes them to do the same.

One question: are there any plans to sort fiction by author, similar to what is done in real libraries? A lot of fiction is already available in this tool, filed under DDN 8xx, but the groupings are pretty broad.

[mekarpeles]

This is a great idea. One of the reasons Open Library Explorer is possible is we have a healthy amount of Dewey + Library of Congress classification data for our books. As you notes, Dewey has Literature 8xx. Library Explorer also supports Library of Congress (you can go to the settings cog and change the classification system).

Some classifications (LCCN) are better at encodind Author data and we also have a significant amount of author data in Open Library (we'd just need to integrate it more meaningfully in our search index).

I opened an issue for you here: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/4319

Given our small team size, not sure we'll have the bandwidth to prioritize any time soon, but contributions are also welcome from the community and we (the community) meet every Tuesday @ 11:30am to discuss and unblock together.