Aaron Swartz is the "killer" feature. How long before this goes the way of abandonment?

A fair question. Looks like other folks are doing the bulk of the coding:

http://demo.openlibrary.org/about/relnote

The problem is that books can be inaccessible. Here are some possible reasons:

-[Cost] You can't afford any books

-[Geographic] There are no libraries or bookstores where you live

-[Rarity] Only 3 copies are extant, and some jerk at Harvard has them all checked out until 2012

If you don't care about books, then no, this probably doesn't directly help you.

The Open Library is also a non-commercial source of information about books, i.e. an alternative to Amazon.com. See this article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6924022.stm