How to manage book lending and borrowing web-2.0-style?
"The Library"
Originally uploaded by The Department.
I've been looking for an web application to manage my book collection and to keep track of lending and borrowing. So far I have been looking at:
- Ning's Bookshelf, which looks nice, but has no lending support
- Billmonk, which has no support for making your library world-visible and is limited to 99 items.
- Stuffopolis, which does not look at nice, but it has a public page for my books, offers tracking of my books via google maps and supports delicious library imports
But I still see some space for improvements for this service:
- Revamp the tagging interface to look more like del.ico.us
- Have AJAX autocompletion support when adding items. The first datasource to query would be the database of books already added by other members
- Integrate with Rapleaf to keep track of a borrower's reputation.
- Create an AJAX-resizeable view of the bookshelf like Delicious Library offers
- Offer last.fm-like recommendations for interesting books based on shelf similarity
- Integrate with online shops: If I am looking for a book, I will first query my Stuffopolis neighborhood if this book is available for borrowing, if not there will be links to amazon.(com|de)
- Provide a Greasemonkey script that will do the reverse for amazon.(com|de). If I am about to buy a book there, notify me if this book is available in my neighborhood.
- Allow me to find possible lenders or borrowers based on location, similar interest, and degree of conectivity (like openBC or linkedIn)
Another Update: I've added a follow up: Managing Book Lists - Part II and Billmonk with public library.
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I am Product Manager for Collaboration and Digital Asset Management at
It's a very web 2.0 library website that mpay interest you
Posted by Nicolas Delsaux on May 17, 2006 at 02:58 PM CEST #
Posted by Auren Hoffman on May 18, 2006 at 07:23 AM CEST #
Auren, I am not involved in Stuffopolis apart from being a user with some ideas. But you should definitely approach Jan Schulz-Hofen of cyclr.com, who has some great ideas about integrating rapleaf in his service.
Posted by Lars Trieloff on May 18, 2006 at 12:00 PM CEST #
I'm happy to announce that, moments ago, BillMonk launched a feature which lets you share your library with the world. What's more, we generate a graphic containing 5 of your randomly chosen items which you can stick on your blog. Clicking on this graphic will take your visitor to a public view of your library where they can browse or search your collection.
Our blog contains more information.
As for the 99 items limit, it's only a restriction while the Library is in beta. We're going to move it out of beta soon and then you will have the option to increase your collection.
Hope you like the new features. Do let us know what you think<a/>.
Cheers,
Gaurav (one of the BillMonks)
Posted by Gaurav Oberoi on May 18, 2006 at 01:23 PM CEST #