BookWyrm has a built-in catalogue of books, which is based on open data from WikiData ⧉ in collaboration with Inventaire ⧉. This data is collaboratively written by volunteers, just like Wikipedia, so it is huge but does also have gaps.
If you can’t find the book you want, you can manually add it to BookWyrm by doing the following:
- Log in on your BookWyrm server and search for the book you want in the search box at the top of the screen.
- If you can’t find your book in the results, click the link at the bottom of the screen to include results from catalogues on other BookWyrm servers. This will give you even more search results.
- If you still can’t find your book, click on the Manually add book link at the bottom of the screen below the second set of search results.
Why is it so awkward? Why do I have to search first?
The idea of this setup is to discourage people from manually entering the details of books that are already in the catalogue. Duplicates cause headaches for other people trying to choose particular books, because they don’t know which one of the duplicates to select. By reducing the number of duplicates, the catalogue is kept easier to use.
Can I import book lists into BookWyrm from other sources?
Yes, if you have an existing account on Goodreads, LibraryThing, StoryGraph, OpenLibrary or Calibre you can import your book lists into BookWyrm.