Books@hackspace

[cromium lake]

Hello all,

I have made an inventory of "all" the books from our bookshelf, I
would like to hook up a web based search tool for our members that
want to see what books we have available. Also it would be nice to
have a system of recording loans for those books that are not "Do not
remove from the space" items.

All the books that did not have their own bar code have been given a
barcode corresponding to their ISBN (or an arbitrary barcode label for
old/non registered books) the list is now ready for anyone that would
like to take over or make something out of this initiative.

Anyone interested? or have any ideas?

Greets,
crom

[Mark Steward]

Nice work!  What format is your inventory in?

My main worry is that how to convince people to keep it up-to-date, so making something shiny and inviting would be good.

Mark

[Katie Sutton]

May not be what you're looking for but last time I talked about this
with Jonty I recommended Koha.

http://www.koha.org/

--
Katie Sutton
http://tajasel.org

"The ‘Net is a waste of time, and that’s exactly what’s right about
it." ~ William Gibson

[danny staple]

Before getting complicated (and yes I think DB's with nice front ends
would probably work), can we get that initial data on the wiki first?

--
Danny Staple

Director, ODM Solutions Ltd
w: http://www.odmsolutions.co.uk
Blog: http://orionrobots.co.uk/blog1-Danny-Staple

[Mark Steward]

No doubt there will be rolled eyes at this question, but why does library software need to be so complicated? The lifecycle of a book is pretty simple - acquire, loan, lose/destroy. Everything else is just reports.

Koha looks fairly lean, but still includes purchasing & labelling, borrower management, shelving & circulation rules, clubs & services, and mailouts!  It's like they'd get it to run the coffee shop if it could.

That's not to condemn it - it obviously depends on whoever's going to put the time in - just that whenever I see a system like this I feel that only one person will learn to use it.

Mark

[asc]

> May not be what you're looking for but last time I talked about this
> with Jonty I recommended Koha.
>
> http://www.koha.org/
>
> --

I think koha is a bit overkill for what we would want. Also that link
you provided is not to the "nice"/legitimate open source version but
the proprietary stolen knock off version. The real URL is http://koha-community.org/

[Will Pearson]

I'm willing to make a small android app to do checkouts and checkins,
using the bar code scanner on them. Not a total solution but might
have some shine factor.
Will

[Sam Kelly]

I remember writing some lightweight library software for my university SF&F society - what exists, who wrote it, where it lives, who's got it. These days I probably wouldn't do it in awk though.

Sam

[Alex]

I'd also be willing to write a REST service to back your app if needs
be <:)

On Dec 5, 12:42 am, Sam Kelly <s...@eithin.co.uk> wrote:
> I remember writing some lightweight library software for my university SF&F
> society - what exists, who wrote it, where it lives, who's got it. These
> days I probably wouldn't do it in awk though.
>
> Sam

[Will Pearson]

A REST service would be great. I'll start a wiki page with my thoughts
for functionality for version 0.1. I think we should get a simple
thing working (just adding new books to the library) and then look at
user demand for more features (and see who else wants to help).

Will

[Alex]

Awesome, let me know when you have some initial specs/features and can
start right away.

New to the space so not too sure about server/specs etc, but I can
host externally if needs be.
(will most likely be in node.js or php)

[Will Pearson]

On Dec 5, 6:22 pm, Alex <a...@moonplug.com> wrote:
> Awesome, let me know when you have some initial specs/features and can
> start right away.
>
> New to the space so not too sure about server/specs etc, but I can
> host externally if needs be.
> (will most likely be in node.js or php)
>

I think probably best to have it on the internal server, babbage (so
that other people can hack on it easily, if needs be). I can get you
an account, I think. We shouldn't be stressing it too much (at least
for the minimal feature set). I doubt more than a handful of users per
day. I was thinking about just having it accessible on the lan, so we
don't have to worry too much about security.

I'd prefer node.js to PHP myself, others here would probably go for
PHP.

We also have a github group. https://github.com/londonhackspace which
the project would ideally go under for neatness. Poke jontyw on IRC to
be added, I think.

There is a rough guide here on how to contribute code/projects. which
will hopefully get filled in by the magic wiki fairies correctly.

http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Contributing_Code

I'll be around on tomorrow evening if you want a chat. I'm not
entirely sure of the smallest viable spec. Also we need to get the
database from Crom so we know what data we have. It is just ISBNs so
we will need to pull info from somewhere.

I've set up a wiki page for the Library project

http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Projects/Library

I'll flesh it out, as I a go.

Will

[cromium lake]

I gave the data to Will yesterday.

Btw, is it possible to create a search tool that can be access after
the login page on our wiki so there is no need of extra security. No
all members live nearby and perhaps this feature will help them.

Thanks guys for the enthusiasm.

[Will Pearson]

The data is on the wiki here

http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Projects/Library/Initial_Data

Library Thing might be a stop gap solution, until we can make
something better for our needs
http://www.librarything.com/

What will people realistically use it the system for?

-- Seeing what books we have?
-- Specifying loaning conditions
-- Checking books in and out (how should this be done for people
without android?)
-- Something else?

Will

[Alex]

Could this be somekind of mobile-ui site/app...?
As shiny as a backend can be, the API could include a google/library
thing lookup when adding books?
Couldnt make it to the space yesterday, however will probably be about
on friday or weekend if anyone wants to have a chat about it.

On Dec 6, 5:21 pm, Will Pearson <wil.pear...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 6:53 am, cromium lake <cromiuml...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I gave the data to Will yesterday.
>
> > Btw, is it possible to create a search tool that can be access after
> > the login page on our wiki so there is no need of extra security. No
> > all members live nearby and perhaps this feature will help them.
>
> > Thanks guys for the enthusiasm.
>
> The data is on the wiki here
>
> http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Projects/Library/Initial_Data
>
> Library Thing might be a stop gap solution, until we can make

> something better for our needshttp://www.librarything.com/

[Alex]

Ran the ISBNs through google books, JSON data available at

http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Projects/Library/Initial_Data

I'll use to create inital db and start on api. Will probably be PHP
now with a small little admin interface.

On Dec 6, 5:21 pm, Will Pearson <wil.pear...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Dec 6, 6:53 am, cromium lake <cromiuml...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I gave the data to Will yesterday.
>
> > Btw, is it possible to create a search tool that can be access after
> > the login page on our wiki so there is no need of extra security. No
> > all members live nearby and perhaps this feature will help them.
>
> > Thanks guys for the enthusiasm.
>
> The data is on the wiki here
>
> http://wiki.london.hackspace.org.uk/view/Projects/Library/Initial_Data
>
> Library Thing might be a stop gap solution, until we can make

> something better for our needshttp://www.librarything.com/