I'm very interested in visual ways to explore ebooks, papers, articles.
A physical library helps discovering new stuff or occasionally bumping in something. With files you need to be much more deliberate and I feel like you can accumulate a lot without really knowing what you have.
Even if this is a simple visualization it already gives ideas on how much more information you could convey with something similar. Like number of pages, color of the cover, to remind you of the book, different font, etc. A set of cues that can help you navigate in the list of books, at least I suspect :)
I would love a way to flexibly view and move around lots of PDFs at different scales, to simulate piles on a desk or the floor. For some purposes, something is lost by constraining organization to a regular grid or table.
Sure you lose track, but it's so much easier with physical things to bump into already seen items and recognize them. Or also casually being interested by a cover or by the size of the books.
I feel like there could be a better way to handle lots of digital books/articles/songs/films/photos/etc
I'm intrigued by the idea of "bumping into something". Totally agree! How would you describe for a digital environment if it's not a pure recommendation algorithm based on similar books?
I was thinking to a 3D representation of a library or a zoomable interface. It could leverage our good spacial memory while also allowing accidental discovery of books
I've thought about this before as a physical item. Like maybe a breadbox size ePaper screen that looks like a tiny bookcase with a API back to Goodreads or something to get the book spine images.
You could also have a section that displays random quotes from books in your library.
Unfortunately for now the licensing on color ePaper is still prohibitive and doing it with an lcd seems somehow tacky to me.
I've also had a similar, but slightly different idea for a practical desktop display - get it to show nice tidbits like a wallpaper. For example, a Newton's cradle, or a spinning top, or a lava lamp or whatever folks put on their desks. Though coding it would be a bit of a challenge for a non-CS guy like me.
Like the other commenter, I've thought about something related before. But I thought about it more like on a platform. If I may... You could make an account and digitalize your bookshelf for you and others to see. You might pin notes, quotes, ratings, open a discussion thread (about paragraphs or the whole book), etc. to a book. The cover art that is displayed could be changed (like a book that was published multiple times under various publishers), but not only to original covers but also community made cover art (pixel art, collages from movie screenshots and so on). You could tag your books and rearrange them accordingly. And so much more...
I wanted something a little... visual, hence why I made this instead of using those services myself (also I wanted to learn about CSS transforms).
Since this plugs easily into Jekyll, I have structured it such that each book entry is kind of like an empty blog post. The plan is to enter my notes or review in the .md file for each book and display that somehow.
To provide more anecdata, I consistently read more than in the original post. But I found myself reading less during 2020 even though I had more time to read.
I have no clue about the personal life of the OP, but I can share my case.
I have two small children (and an old one). During 2020 we had no kindergarten, no visits to grandma and no babysitter, because the lockdown was very strict here.
Also I teach in the first year of the university, and we had everything ready for the presencial clases as usual. We had to switch to virtual clases with a head-up of one month [1] [2].
So I had to drop my hobbies and reduce my research time and other not urgent activities.
[Note: A fixed weekly Zoom/Meet/Teams meeting with your friends helps a lot to keep your mental sanity.]
[1] How do you replace a blackboard? A real blackboard is very difficult to read in a Zoom/Meet/Teams meeting. A few of my coworker bought one, but had to switch to other methods.
[2] Moodle has like a thousand of options and it takes a lot of time to find the combination that is more similar to what you want and coordinate with your coworkers to find the best one.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Users of my book cataloguing app have been asking for "progress" feature and providing the page number seems like the easiest way to go.
Haven't heard of LazyLibrarian, but I've licensed this with "Unlicense" so it's effectively free to use for all purposes. Perhaps the authors of LazyLibrarian can use it in some way?
Looks great! Two things you could do to make it super smooth is speed up the animation by about two thirds, and make it so one book is put back before the second one gets animated outwards.
I’ve tried similar myself but I love the visual simplicity of this. Much nicer than a list. If you’re interested I came across this year’s ago … some nice inspirations and ways of finding new stuff.
Lost to the sands of time. It had a feature where you could export as HTML and I did used to put it online (with all the thousands of small thumbnails and covers). It’s loss is what’s making me better at preserving history.
Came here to say this... The book animates behind all the other ones. I was like "...shouldn't the book be in front of the others so I can see the title? you know... I bet it's because it's Safari". Sure enough Chrome works as expected
Very cool! I might borrow some of your ideas and implement them on my own reading log (https://edmundo.is/reading). Right now it’s just a list of all books I have read, but I'm working on implementing filters for genre and year (year only shows on hover for now, or by tapping the book on mobile), and maybe breaking the grid by year like you have!
Interesting there’s cover art for books, but it would be handy to have spine art too.
I used to buy lots of books and now have them stacked up, I’ve bought lots of eBooks and whilst I don’t trip up on them I don’t get into the habit of progressing them. From Physics I’ve set up collections for books I’ve got to 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50% which roughly works out as equal, and I have the little triumph of moving a book forward.
This is nice. I didn't try but to get a pseudo-random variation of the book height, will it be possible to do a pre-defined Cicada Principle[1] method, say, pick 20-30 heights and keep picking them up.
There seem to be quite a lot of people who have their own book collection. I'm still looking for something simple that can spit out a HTML front; and yet to find something I like.
On another note, recently I was looking for a Library Management System for a small community, with a current book collection of over 25,000. I looked a bunch of Open Source Solutions (most are too complex). I also do not want to do build anything from scratch.
I settled on Libib[2] and the subscription is economical enough for what we are looking for.
You might think of adding a link or two for each book. Say to the Wikipedia entry for the author, or a review of the book. I was curious about the, "Demon Cycle" for instance, and would have liked to read more about it.
116 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 198 ms ] threadA physical library helps discovering new stuff or occasionally bumping in something. With files you need to be much more deliberate and I feel like you can accumulate a lot without really knowing what you have.
Even if this is a simple visualization it already gives ideas on how much more information you could convey with something similar. Like number of pages, color of the cover, to remind you of the book, different font, etc. A set of cues that can help you navigate in the list of books, at least I suspect :)
It's not necessary to ask how I know this :-)
I feel like there could be a better way to handle lots of digital books/articles/songs/films/photos/etc
You could also have a section that displays random quotes from books in your library.
Unfortunately for now the licensing on color ePaper is still prohibitive and doing it with an lcd seems somehow tacky to me.
Perhaps if you can make the book width in proportion of the book's number of pages it will be great. Well done for the software, will try this soon.
[1]ArtFrame: E-paper wireless artwork for your living room:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30839762
Like the other commenter, I've thought about something related before. But I thought about it more like on a platform. If I may... You could make an account and digitalize your bookshelf for you and others to see. You might pin notes, quotes, ratings, open a discussion thread (about paragraphs or the whole book), etc. to a book. The cover art that is displayed could be changed (like a book that was published multiple times under various publishers), but not only to original covers but also community made cover art (pixel art, collages from movie screenshots and so on). You could tag your books and rearrange them accordingly. And so much more...
I suppose Goodreads or Oku fill that space?
I wanted something a little... visual, hence why I made this instead of using those services myself (also I wanted to learn about CSS transforms).
Since this plugs easily into Jekyll, I have structured it such that each book entry is kind of like an empty blog post. The plan is to enter my notes or review in the .md file for each book and display that somehow.
e.g. https://bookshelf-maxmetcalfe.vercel.app/?author=7 (books authored by Bill Bryson)
I guess 2020 just sucked.
I have two small children (and an old one). During 2020 we had no kindergarten, no visits to grandma and no babysitter, because the lockdown was very strict here.
Also I teach in the first year of the university, and we had everything ready for the presencial clases as usual. We had to switch to virtual clases with a head-up of one month [1] [2].
So I had to drop my hobbies and reduce my research time and other not urgent activities.
[Note: A fixed weekly Zoom/Meet/Teams meeting with your friends helps a lot to keep your mental sanity.]
[1] How do you replace a blackboard? A real blackboard is very difficult to read in a Zoom/Meet/Teams meeting. A few of my coworker bought one, but had to switch to other methods.
[2] Moodle has like a thousand of options and it takes a lot of time to find the combination that is more similar to what you want and coordinate with your coworkers to find the best one.
[0] https://cjlm.ca/reading/
https://tomcritchlow.com/wiki/books/bookshelves/
My favourite is this one with the little toggle for reviews or comments:
https://daverupert.com/bookshelf/
[0] https://delicious-monster.com/
By the way, on the newest safari it doesn't work properly. I tried it then out with Chrome, and no problems there.
https://bookshulf.com/
This instantly reminded me of Shelfari, I had lots of fun adding and cataloging books on it.
I used to buy lots of books and now have them stacked up, I’ve bought lots of eBooks and whilst I don’t trip up on them I don’t get into the habit of progressing them. From Physics I’ve set up collections for books I’ve got to 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 50% which roughly works out as equal, and I have the little triumph of moving a book forward.
What's your distribution between those six categories plus 0% and 100%?
There seem to be quite a lot of people who have their own book collection. I'm still looking for something simple that can spit out a HTML front; and yet to find something I like.
On another note, recently I was looking for a Library Management System for a small community, with a current book collection of over 25,000. I looked a bunch of Open Source Solutions (most are too complex). I also do not want to do build anything from scratch.
I settled on Libib[2] and the subscription is economical enough for what we are looking for.
1. https://lea.verou.me/2020/07/the-cicada-principle-revisited-...
2. https://www.libib.com
looks similar tech to some virtual birthday cards which didn't have enough time to be physically sent halfway across the planet
https://abbey-decorators.co.uk/cards/hoj.html
https://abbey-decorators.co.uk/cards/mij.html
You might think of adding a link or two for each book. Say to the Wikipedia entry for the author, or a review of the book. I was curious about the, "Demon Cycle" for instance, and would have liked to read more about it.