Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
I haven't the foggiest what goes into running a library. The simple act of tracking inventory should be fairly easy to manage in calibre with a custom column or two, but I doubt that is all there is to it.
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Very honest.
Also true. Unless it's a "toy" library for just a small number of family members then it's much harder than a custom column or too.
I have about 2000 ebooks in Calibre. But I never added them all at once. It's since I first used Calibre on XP.
I have thousands of technical PDFs (datasheets, operator manuals, service information, old scanned technical books. I got a tablet upgrade the end of last year and found they use about 200 Gbyte of the 256G SD card! Simply fixing the metadata correctly would be daunting. I'd use a separate Calibre Library. So I've considered it and decided I've better things to do.
I have two professional barcode systems apart from my phone app. You can't use the ISBN for the scanner, except to initially find metadata. Each book/document needs a unique library database ID barcode using a different code system to the EAN/UPC/ISBN type barcode, to avoid confusion. I've about 3000+ books, not including my #6th offspring's books. He's still at home, though I'm not sure why. Maybe the free board and food? Anyway, newer systems use an RFID tag rather than a barcode.
You need also for physical books to record the condition, when bought as well as published. You need to pay a library licence.
Ebooks out of copyright are simple. Just give away a copy. If they are in copyright, then you need a licence, cost depending on library edition price and number of simultaneous copies.
Publishers / Library umbrella groups DO pay authors royalties based on the number of loans.
Actually one of Ray's forthcoming books draws on my experience of this and the various start-up businesses I've had. In "Robin Morgan, Faerie Prince", Robin has been running small retail businesses since Sumerian days. His current plan (Just after the Coronavirus!) is a combined second-hand book store pay-as-you-go lending library with a dairy/coffeeshop/vegetarian cafe. Hardly viable in real life, but several local S/H bookshops used to "buy back" books. Sadly the Charity shops have killed most of them as they like to only have best sellers and clean copies, so most of the sources of out of print books are gone.