Ask HN: Software to share your library with friends? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Software to share your library with friends?

12 pointsLorenDB7 comments

I and some friends would like to set up a shared library program where we can see the contents of each other's bookshelves and then borrow books from each other easily. I was looking around for suitable software; TinyCat looks reasonable but I'm not sure if it's the perfect solution to this problem. Do you have any recommendations?

I'm happy to self host but that's not a requirement. Bonus points for good FOSS solutions.

Edit: in case you're wondering, I'm talking about physical dead-tree books, not ebooks.

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I haven’t used it myself but I was going to suggest TinyCat. However, you mentioned that it isn’t suitable without going into specifics. Based on my understanding of the software and of your requirements it seems like a great option. Can you expand on what you mean by saying it won’t work for you?

I'm not completely opposed to TinyCat; the main reservation I have about TinyCat is that it seems to make your library publicly visible to anyone and everyone, which I would tend to shy away from.

Presumably you must want something more than a simple spreadsheet that lists all the books with their owners and current borrowers. It might help to know what you have in mind. Cover images? ISBN links? Import wizard? Personal reviews?

Sure! I'm not too worried about fancy features. Cover images and ISBN would be nice for sure, but manual input of books probably wouldn't be a huge bother (at least for me). Reviews would also be nice but aren't a big deal.

Mainly I want something that lets us pretend we have a "real" library system and is easy to use.

Maybe you can configure https://directus.io/ to your needs

Calibre, alternatively you can pretty easily just serve ebooks from a standard webpage.

Thanks, but I'm talking about physical books. Calibre isn't going to be much help there :)

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