[Noisebridge-discuss] Open source web based library catalog system?

[Albert Sweigart]

I've sorted the library into general categories last night, and can do
some more fine tuning later on.

I had been planning writing up a simple web app that could do exactly
this. I've found most of the open source solutions are overkill for
what we need. My basic plan was almost identical to Rubin's:

* Web app
* Library/user management
* Borrow/return & inventory tracking
* Graphically display where on the book shelf the book is (or should
be reshelved too), including between what books it goes.
* simple tag system (useful for marking book's category/categories, or
things like "don't remove from space" or "on loan to noisebridge",
etc.)
* Skip the barcode, instead type in the title or author and have
autocomplete finish the book for us. (Connecting the barcode/webcam
input to the webapp has kind of been a pain, and I realized that it
might be easier to skip the barcode stuff altogether. We can always
add it in later.)
* Email reminders/email requests to return books earlier.
* Quick Amazon.com review lookups.

KISS

For privacy, people can use pseudonyms. We're on the honor system
anyway since people can just walk off with books. But collecting trend
data will be very useful to determine what type of books we should
acquire, and which books never get touched.

We don't need a website for this, we could just run it on a local
webserver on a laptop off of a LiveCD (and periodically email off a
backup of the database).

I'll take charge of this, it's something that I've been planning for a
while. I'd like any help or input though.

-Al