How Bookworm works

A private book catalogue for families and friends.

It answers four questions quickly: do we own this book and where is it, have we ever owned it, who has read it, and, when standing in a shop, is this edition or another edition of the same book already at home.

Books, editions, copies, readers

• A work is the book as an idea, for example The Master and Margarita, regardless of language or edition.
• An edition is one published version, usually identified by its ISBN. A translation is another edition of the same work.
• A copy is a physical book on a shelf. It belongs to one person and sits in one library.
• Reading status (unread, reading, read, abandoned) is personal: it belongs to a reader and a work, whichever edition they own.

Copies that leave the house are not deleted. They become former copies with a reason (discarded, given away, sold, lost) and a date, so the catalogue remembers what you once had.

Libraries

A library is one person's collection. You own your library; nobody sees it unless you invite them. You can own several libraries, for example one for the office, and you can be invited into other people's libraries.

Roles in a library:

Reading statuses of a library's owner and editors are visible to everyone in that library. A viewer's own statuses stay private.

The library switcher in the top bar shows the library you are working in. Scanning always goes into the selected library.

Scanning

Open Scan. Set the defaults once: owner of the copies, currently owned or former, reading status, and the shelf location. Every barcode you scan then inherits them. A Bluetooth barcode scanner behaves like a keyboard, so you can also type or paste an ISBN.

• Bookworm looks the ISBN up at Open Library and Google Books and fills in title, authors, cover and more.
• If the same person already has a current copy of that edition in that library, Bookworm asks before adding another. Answer with the keys 1 (add) or 2 (skip); Enter never confirms, so a stray scan cannot answer for you.
• If the new edition looks like a work already in the library, Bookworm asks whether to link them.
• If no source knows the ISBN, the scan is kept and appears on Pending, where you can retry later, type the details, or keep it as a bare ISBN entry.

Add is for books without a barcode: search the sources by title and author, or type the details.

Searching and the buy check

The Library page searches as you type, by title, author or ISBN. Filters narrow by owner, current or former copies, reading status, location and loans. Searching an ISBN shows a verdict at the top: this edition is in this library, it is in another library you can see, it was previously owned, the same work exists in another edition or language, or nothing is known.

Lending

On a book's page, the owner of a copy can lend it to a member or to anyone by name, and mark it returned later. Members who do not own the copy can ask to borrow it; the owner is emailed and decides on the book's page. The library page can filter books that are lent out, or borrowed by you.

Notes

Every copy can carry notes. A note is either visible only to you, or to everyone in the library. Only the author can change or remove a note.

Sharing and accounts

Accounts are created through invitations only. From Libraries you can invite someone to Bookworm without sharing anything; they create an account and start their own library. From your library's page you can share it with a viewer or editor by email. Each invitation link works once, for that address only, for two weeks. You can revoke access at any time.

Your preferences

Under your name in the top bar: email address (needed for invitations and password resets), light or dark appearance, accent colour, language, and your password.

Statistics and export

Stats shows books per member, favourite authors, categories, languages and publication decades across all the libraries you can see. Export downloads the current library as a spreadsheet. The whole system is backed up every night.