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https://github.com/tolitius/libriot

buy a book, lent a book, and... remember where it is
https://github.com/tolitius/libriot

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buy a book, lent a book, and... remember where it is

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README

          


libriot live

##Where Books Live a Full Life

* Library buys e-books. Each one is from a given publisher, and
bought from a given Web site (which may or may not belong to that
publisher, another publisher, etc. O'Reilly also sells books for
other publishers, for instance).

* Many (but not all) books are about a product or language, and
written for a specific version of that product or language. Often new
versions result in new editions of the book which we'd need to buy
separately.

* Typically the tech books we buy are not DRM'd (e.g. not
iBooks/Kindle/Nook), though I suppose they could be. Instead, we
usually get the book in 3 or 4 formats (PDF, Mobi, ePub, etc.). There
may be code associated with the book in a separate ZIP file or
available at some public URL or whatever.

* The books are sometimes updated, and you have to go to the site you
bought it from to get the updated files.

* Each book is bought by one e-mail account, which may be a generic
one (ebooks@libriot.com) or may be an individual's
(angelina.jolie@libriot.com). Only that address gets "push"
notifications when new revisions or errata or revised code samples are
available.

* Each book should only be "used" by one person at a time. As far as
I'm concerned if I buy a book and I'm done with it, I can pass it over
to you to read. But I should then delete my copy, and I shouldn't
pass it to more than one other person at a time.

* Several Web sites have reviews of each book -- the publisher's site,
Amazon (for Kindle or physical copies of the same book), perhaps
Goodreads, etc. Certainly numerical, and possible textual reviews as
well.

* Nobody currently has a list of what books we have, who is "using"
them, which ones have updates available, which ones are good or bad,
etc. There is no way to browse, no way to request a particular title
from the person who "has" it, no way to see the descriptive blurb or
back cover text, etc.

##So, What Would Be Nice?

So it would be nice if this worked more like a library:

* you search for Clojure books (or Rails books but only for Rails 3, or whatever)
* get a list of them in order of descending ratings
* and click some buttons to ask the people who "have" them to release them so you can
"take" them
* when someone "returned" a book they should be prompted to confirm that they've deleted their copy
* it should notify whoever asked for it
* then you could select the format you wanted to receive and the app would give you the download.