Book lending

[ebuca]

Hello, I am considering using Calibre to manage a small community library (paper books). Is there a plugin to manage loans (borrower's name, loan date)?

(Please excuse my English, it is not my native language.)

[vampireacademia]

I do not know about Calibre, but you may want to check out LibraryThing. They have a circulation feature for high trust lending situations. They also have a paid product called TinyCat which functions more like a typical library catalog.

https://blog.librarything.com/2015/0...a-circulation/

[BetterRed]

Short answer is: No.

It might be possible to fashion something using calibre's customisation features (plugins, templates, action chains, etc), I'm not aware of anyone having done it..

However, an internet search for "lending library software free" is probably the best place to look, there are a number of 'free' cloud based systems.

And have a look in https://www.reddit.com/r/librarians/

BR

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ebuca

Hello, I am considering using Calibre to manage a small community library (paper books). Is there a plugin to manage loans (borrower's name, loan date)?

(Please excuse my English, it is not my native language.)

I've installed and written lending libraries for paper books and video.

Calibre is totally unsuited. It manages books, not people. Since the books are digital there is no built in feature to scan a paper edition (though that could be added) or track condition (could be added).

A lending library manages people. Also it has a unique record for each copy of a book even if there are 15 of them of the same exact edition.

A lending library also tracks time and dates of issue and return as well as book condition.

For the last 30 to 50 years any physical library on computer has used unique tagging per book (not the ISBN code!) using optical or RF tags to check books in or out and allow librarian to check computer record for titles on the shelf.


There is no doubt if you have more time and ingenuity than sense it might be possible to use Calibre in poor way. Also any sane library system is multiuser with a server and a multi-user database server (mySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, MS-SQL etc). Calibre is a single user program using a single user file for data (Sqlight). The main Calibre interface is also like a spreadsheet with a row for each title. A Lending library UI is a form for issue/receive and only a partial search query generates a list. Or a form might show all the books for a person when their card is scanned, or if selected from a member partial search.

A client program nowadays could be a browser simply accessing a web server that has a server program using a database server. Earliest ones used terminals and later there were client applications that accessed a server.

[ebuca]

Hello, thank you very much for your detailed response.

However, my needs are radically different from what you describe. I don't need to manage the circulation of books, I just need to know whether they are available or not. Adding a loan date or details about the borrower is simply a bonus. There is also no need for multi-user management. Calibre seems ideal to me, as it offers the possibility of an integrated server allowing consultation of the book's details, the list by author or genre, as well as allowing the book description to be downloaded.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ebuca

Hello, thank you very much for your detailed response.

However, my needs are radically different from what you describe. I don't need to manage the circulation of books, I just need to know whether they are available or not. Adding a loan date or details about the borrower is simply a bonus. There is also no need for multi-user management. Calibre seems ideal to me, as it offers the possibility of an integrated server allowing consultation of the book's details, the list by author or genre, as well as allowing the book description to be downloaded.

When you download metadata, you will need to manually check it to fix the errors. There will always be errors. I've never downloaded metadata that was 100% correct. Even if it's just the description that has review text, that's still wrong and needs to be manually edited.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ebuca

Hello, thank you very much for your detailed response.

However, my needs are radically different from what you describe. I don't need to manage the circulation of books, I just need to know whether they are available or not. Adding a loan date or details about the borrower is simply a bonus. There is also no need for multi-user management. Calibre seems ideal to me, as it offers the possibility of an integrated server allowing consultation of the book's details, the list by author or genre, as well as allowing the book description to be downloaded.

I'm afraid you're wrong and it would be a bad dead end.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by ebuca

Hello, thank you very much for your detailed response.

However, my needs are radically different from what you describe. I don't need to manage the circulation of books, I just need to know whether they are available or not. Adding a loan date or details about the borrower is simply a bonus. There is also no need for multi-user management. Calibre seems ideal to me, as it offers the possibility of an integrated server allowing consultation of the book's details, the list by author or genre, as well as allowing the book description to be downloaded.

It is amusing to me how every time a question comes up more people are on about how you cant and it wont work instead of trying to help.

You seem to require a very basic system and can achieve most of what you want using 4-5 custom columns for lending status/user/date borrowed / date due back. If I am not wrong you can also get the the box to change color for overdue books etc.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Dopedangel

It is amusing to me how every time a question comes up more people are on about how you cant and it wont work instead of trying to help.

Sometimes it's because people have spent years doing it. Certainly Calibre is brilliant and you can do the lending thing by adding some columns, but it's a rubbish solution that's a dead end.

Similarly you could use Calibre as an audio or video jukebox, but there are better ways of doing that too.

For some people if they are familiar with one program they are like someone with only a hammer or only a screwdriver that think it's a tool for every job. Like people using Powerpoint for DTP, or Excel (or even Word) as a database.

[Dopedangel]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Sometimes it's because people have spent years doing it. Certainly Calibre is brilliant and you can do the lending thing by adding some columns, but it's a rubbish solution that's a dead end.

Similarly you could use Calibre as an audio or video jukebox, but there are better ways of doing that too.

For some people if they are familiar with one program they are like someone with only a hammer or only a screwdriver that think it's a tool for every job. Like people using Powerpoint for DTP, or Excel (or even Word) as a database.

what you did is unnecessarily confrontational. You could have started out by saying that the op could do these things to achieve what they want ask for more details then recommend something else as that should work better. If you start out with no you cant do that etc you just turn the person off. You are not being paid to be on this forum if you cant be helpful you can just not post if you don't want to help.