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I haven't been in a library for a long time, but in 90s I never had this issue. We had a "card" where librarian would stamp the date. Books had a paper on the back where they would stamp the issue date and return date.

It was trivial to know when you had to return a book. Is this done differently in Germany?

I like the app but I believe people won't buy/subscribe to an app that helps you only if you forget to return a book in time. Most people will believe they will return it in time and won't invest in this type of "insurance".

Libraries might be more interesting customers but they have little reason to reduce late fee bills as it is extra income to them. You could/should look whether university/free libraries are interested.

Hope you enjoy working on it.

>It was trivial to know when you had to return a book. Is this done differently in Germany?

It should be. The due dates are all listed on the webpage

And some libraries even send reminder emails before the due date

But that is how they got me. I got used to their reminder mails, and then - "Our mail server had a failure and now you have to pay 60€"

>I like the app but I believe people won't buy/subscribe to an app that helps you only if you forget to return a book in time. Most people will believe they will return it in time and won't invest in this type of "insurance".

I wish someone had told me that before I wrote it

But there is also the secondary feature of keeping a record of read books. I read a lot of incomplete series before I had it, and now I want to read the rest of the series, but I do not remember what the series was.

>You could/should look whether university/free libraries are interested.

They are the worst. They have much less patrons than public libraries, and almost never answer emails. I think I might have gotten email PTSD from them.

>Hope you enjoy working on it.

I enjoyed it 13 years ago. But not anymore.

> because basically no one goes to public libraries anymore

Is this a German thing, an urban thing, or really a true statement universally? I ask because prior to covid lockdown, we made at least weekly trips to our public library and it always had a steady stream of patrons.

Compared to almost anything else not involving libraries

There are more people reading books than there are people reading books from a library. If I had just made a tool (in English) to keep a list books without involving (German) libraries, it would probably be much more successful and only take a hundredths of effort.

And worse, I did not target libraries in general, but libraries in my city. Anything limited to one city has a too low user base. I planed to expand it city by city, by selling it in one city to cover the travel cost to the next city, so I can lend books there, actually test it, and make sure everything remains bugfree.

The alternative option, expert users can use it with any library, by editing the config XML files to include their webpage URL and server parameters, seems to have been too confusing for people

> basically no one goes to public libraries anymore.

I do. This surprises me.

I always think a weekly trip to the library is good for the soul, just to be reminded of all the knowledge that's out there waiting to be discovered. Good reminder to watch less Netflix :-)

In my locale, the public library has shrunk in size to about 40% of its size 20 years ago. And it now includes a coffee bar and lunch café. The current selection is mostly popular books. For all topics I know something about, the non-fiction books seems to cater to children, lay-people, and beginners.

The library has pivoted to social work, helping low-literate people, offering a safe space for teenagers to study, and a place for the elderly and 30+ women to meet. Those are all good reasons to exists, particularly because many of the visitors cannot go anywhere else, but I miss the library of my youth. I loved spending hours moving through the stacks, discovering all kinds of oddities and new things. But that seems passé. Even in the university library the amount of books has shrunk a lot and the depot with a lot of older stuff is now off-limits.

The current trend in libraries is to abolish fines and waive any past fines. It has been shown to increase usage of the libraries.

Do people really not use libraries in Germany any more? In the US, they are more popular than ever.

> Do people really not use libraries in Germany any more?

I am really chuckling at the double meaning here.

> And I really should not have written my own HTML parser for it

> But you cannot go to a library without it.

Why is this? Did you arrange some kind of exclusivity deal with libraries in an area to manage borrowing so that people have to use it?

I think GP means that people should want to use the app because it can save them from having to pay late fees, not that people need to use the app. Like saying "Yelp, cannot go to a restaurant without it".