←back to thread

84 points hmkoyan | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.213s | 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.

Show context
bhattisatish ◴[] No.44610416[source]
I have more than 500 books too. I have tried using multiple platforms and I end up leaving them because they become a social platform or more than a simple book management. I don't have issues with that, but it's about how much time I want to spend on interacting with people. For e.g. my wife used to be very active in Librarything and Goodreads, but during covid and post covid, she has completely stopped using these platforms. So depending upon peoples needs the platform can become useful or time leeches. And it will depend upon what they need from it at that given moment.

Now, I have an excel sheet with all the books I have, and I don't see any way to import that list into the platform. I don't see myself sitting and rescanning or manually entering that list. For maintaining the library, i.e. whenever we buy books at that moment scanning or manual entry makes sense. But during onboarding I need an excel or csv import provision.

Currently we are using [My Library](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vgm.mylibr...), an android app. I am ready to move out of it as then the whole family can operate it.

Features I will like:

- Easy on boarding of a large collection

- Auto categorization. I don't want to sit manually and tag it or set the genre

- Multiple people be able to add and update a collection (Family mode)

- Borrow/Loaned status

- Books read but not owned

- Sharing the collection with closed group (friends and family)

- Sharing the collection with a larger community (if someone in the family is interested, but only in their profile and not all family members)

- Book recommendations (things that fall in my interest are fine, but also that surprise me). I miss the days when the book store owner used to remember us and used to recommend something which otherwise I wouldn't have picked up.

- And obviously able to export my data. I have been burned by enough platforms in the past 15 years that, this is necessary!

replies(3): >>44610433 #>>44611688 #>>44613385 #
1. hmkoyan ◴[] No.44613385[source]
Thank you very much for this detailed comment — it is indeed very useful to me. The import feature is certainly on my radar and is something that I'll start developing very soon. You're absolutely right that it would make onboarding a large collection really easy. I'll take note of the other features you mentioned too. Thank you again!