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.