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Ask HN: How to share a book with a distributed team?

2 points by BerislavLopac ↗ HN
I've encountered an interesting problem that is endemic to distributed teams: how to have a copy of an book that can be efficiently shared between multiple team members?

In a traditional office, we could buy one paper copy (or maybe a few, for very popular books and/or large teams), and any team member who wants to read it could borrow it to read in their own time. With a distributed team this is not really viable, except for DRM-free books that can be copied multiple times; but we would like to offer restricted books as well.

Can anyone recommend a solution?

3 comments

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AlexeyBrin
A possible approach for restricted books - put them on a machine (or VM) that can be remotely accessed by all your team members and allocate time slices for potential readers. Instead of borrowing the physical book like in the past, they will ask for time on the shared machine.
codingdave
Does this book exist in libraries?

If so, just tell everyone the name of it and recommend they check it out. Many libraries these days are also providers of e-books if your team prefers that.

boldingbroke
Create a password-protected PDF based on a digital scan of the book. Then only release the password to the team.