[zozbot234]

> By now we should have already built a global repository where all digital books ever published or digitized from physical copies should have been available to anyone with internet access

The Open Library is pretty much this... for books in the public domain. AKA many more books than anyone could feasibly read in an entire lifetime, even if one only considered the "Great Classics" of Western literature. If your aim is to expand access to books, the lowest-hanging fruit by far is improving availability, findability (cataloging), reusability etc. of stuff that can be provided on any website with no legal issues whatsoever.

[bentley]

Yep. I appreciate how there are so many open source projects whose interests align to naturally work together at different layers toward a future of better curation:

1. Open Library providing a database of book titles, authors, and other metadata (unlike Goodreads, etc. whose databases are proprietary).

2. Internet Archive, Google Books, and Hathitrust scanning books and making full scans available for download as copyrights expire.

3. Project Gutenberg, PGDP, etc. transcribing scans and unscanned books to digital text.

4. Standard Ebooks applying a consistent style guide and providing additional cleanup and proofreading, attractive covers, and more detailed HTML and EPUB metadata.