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Show HN: I built library management app for those who outgrew spreadsheets

(www.librari.io)
78 points hmkoyan | 3 comments | 18 Jul 25 19:28 UTC | HN request time: 0.63s | source

I've been working on librari.io for the past several months and just launched the beta version.

The Problem: I have 500+ books across multiple rooms in my house and was desperately looking for an app to manage them properly. Most library management apps are either too basic or designed for institutional libraries with rigid workflows that don't fit personal use.

What I Built:

- Multiple libraries: manage collections in different locations

- Location tracking - remember exactly which shelf each book is on

- Loan management - track books you've lent to friends

- Custom fields & tags - store any additional book info the way YOU think about them

- Reading progress tracking - dates, duration, personal ratings

- Modern UI/UX - clean & actually enjoyable to use

Current Status:

- Beta version live

- Working on improving the responsiveness of the app and addressing initial user feedback

Would love feedback! Especially curious about:

- What features would make YOU actually use a library management app?

- UI/UX feedback always welcome

- Any book collectors here who'd be interested in beta testing?

Looking forward to your thoughts! Thank you in advance.

1. rorylaitila ◴[18 Jul 25 20:12 UTC] No.44609279[source]▶
I'm in an adjacent area, cataloging my huge collection of periodicals for my vintage ad collection (adretro.com). The biggest thing that helped me that I didn't see you mention but maybe I missed it: taking book cover photos to populate the inventory. OpenAI vision can easily extract the book, author and meta data. This speeds up the data entry considerably. I scan a whole box of periodicals and upload a zip of all the images. My software extracts the info. So for yours, if I just take photos of all the books on a shelf, it could handle the rest.
replies(1): >>44609821 #
2. hmkoyan ◴[18 Jul 25 21:04 UTC] No.44609821[source]▶
Thank you for your comment. Currently, there are three methods of adding a book: searching (which uses the Google Books API under the hood), manual addition (which nobody wants to do — I completely understand — but is the only option for old books that cannot be found online; I have a lot of these) and scanning the ISBN (which also uses the Google Books API). I initially thought about adding the method you suggested, where you provide a picture and then extract the information, but I decided it was not the right time to implement that. So, I left it for later, when there is any need or feedback regarding it from users. From your comment, I understand that it's something that users might actually consider using.
replies(1): >>44610471 #
3. rorylaitila ◴[18 Jul 25 22:27 UTC] No.44610471[source]▶
Yeah if there is an ISBN listed, that will be fastest. But for older books that don't have an ISBN, if there is a title on the cover or spine, OpenAI is really good at extracting that, regardless of the font or image quality. It's like a super OCR. From the title and author you can probably stub in the rest of the data, and the user can correct it if necessary.