[kwlug-disc] kwlug library on kwlug.org (Was Re: What does kwlug.org mean to you? (Was...)

[unsolicited]

Khalid Baheyeldin wrote, On 12/30/2009 9:36 PM:
> 
>     With regard to the library (FYI/FWIW:
>     - there has been some discussion in the past regarding getting the
>     list of books up on kwlug.org <http://kwlug.org> since the last site
>     revamp. There doesn't appear to be any drupal add-on of decent
>     functionality, let alone presently being maintained. (Last time I
>     looked. I think, at least, Charles, Khalid, and I all looked. There
>     were probably others.) There are other sites, such as
>     librarything.com <http://librarything.com> - although they appear to
>     have some really cool functionality with regard to books and
>     collections (e.g. ISBN lookup), nothing I came across added the
>     library elements of lending.  If someone knows of something good, do
>     please post.
> 
> 
> Now that I think about it some more, a combination of CCK and Views 
> should get us a nice list of books. ISBN would be one CCK field and 
> hence will be searchable. Adding a taxonomy for topics will also make 
> them browsable by things like linux, languages, system administration, 
> ....etc. It does not have to be on kwlug.org <http://kwlug.org>, can be 
> on a subdomain (library.kwlug.org <http://library.kwlug.org>).
> 
> This does not get us who has borrowed what, if we ever care about this. 
> A simple pen and paper sheet or even Google Document spreadsheet can do 
> that. There is also a Drupal based Google Spreadsheet like module now 
> http://drupal.org/project/sheetnode but I have not used it first hand.

This is (part of) the missing functionality we need. There will be 
multiple librarians, and paper gets lost.

- publicly viewable will need to be book status (checked in/out). 
Filtered, even.
- librarian viewable will need to be borrowed by whom / when. [Contact 
details? i.e. Whatever is on the sign out sheet.]
- it would be nice if a button could be hit causing a book request to 
be sent to the librarians.
- all the other book fields, title, date, donated by, when, etc., will 
be needed. Perhaps a local review comment field as well.
- a method of population, e.g. I could bar code scan them into 
librarything or something, and dump the list back to you.
- at a quick glance, it feels like something like librarything has all 
the book listing / details functionality one could ever want. It's the 
lending / status bits that are missing. The page could call 
librarything (hopefully auto-logging in) [by ISBN # even], then the 
user could come back to say send a book request. Or something. i.e. 
There is a richness of functionality to librarything - it would seem 
nice to take advantage of it. [By logging in I mean, I (did?) could 
create a kwlug librarything id, marking the book list private. Then 
the link logging in would make the library list visible. I'm guessing 
the lug's library listing should not be a public everyone an see thing.]
- of course, there will be a need for maintenance functionality: new 
books come in, check in/out sheets posted after each meeting, book 
status changes (lost), etc.