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Church Book Library

Comments (9) · 12 December 2005 · permalink

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As part of the redesign of the Toongabbie Anglican Church web-site, I’ve been thinking about how to extend the usefulness of the church web-site for members.

One idea that I had a while back, was establishing a church-based library. This would not be a physical library, but a means for members to search for books online, and arrange to borrow them from other members of the church – a pooling of resources.

Obviously, such a library would need an easy method for storing the book list and recording the borrowings. I’ve been looking for a script/app that I could install on the church web-site to handle the mechanics, and today I found one.

I found the Distributed Library Project software through communitybooks.org a distributed library in the San Francisco Bay area.

After requiring a few changes to the source code to install the software, and make it functional, I have a test site up and running. One of the nicest features, is that to add a book you are willing to lend out, you can type in the ISBN and the software uses the Amazon API to look up the book details – it even grabs a customer review to display in the library. Borrowing is initiated with a click online, but the means of physically lending the book is left to an email conversation between the lender and the lendee to arrange. The site will send out reminders for books nearing their due date. To develop trust, lenders can rate lendees (much like eBay’s feedback system).

So, a nice little application. Now, to some questions? Do you think a small church community of ~150-200 would actually use such a system? Would you? Would you lend books, would you be keen to borrow books? The software also allows for lending videos and music.

Comments

Permlink: 1 ·
Comment by: Neil ·
Date Stamp: Monday 12 December, 2005 at 03:43 AM

Nice idea.

I have quite few resources that I would be happy to loan out. I suspect that SNC would be the main users, but a cool idea which I would be happy to be part of.

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Comment by: Glenn ·
Date Stamp: Monday 12 December, 2005 at 04:01 AM

That is a great idea! It would have the added bonus of getting people communicating with others in the church community. The only possible down side would be if some people abused the system and didn’t return stuff, but you would hope that a church community would have less of a problem with that.

I would be very interested in seeing how that goes and possibly implementing that in the Glenmore Park site. So, can we see the test site?

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Comment by: Simon ·
Date Stamp: Monday 12 December, 2005 at 04:36 AM

Glenn,

Sure, test site. I haven’t modified much, except removed a few places where emails were displayed raw. Feel free to create an account and try it out – in fact, it will help me to see it in action.

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Comment by: Ben ·
Date Stamp: Monday 12 December, 2005 at 06:31 AM

Certainly bound to be a majority SNC thing, but this word nerd would use it. I would be willing to contribute several of my own books and talks on tape.

Re. Glenn’s comment, I have usually found that church people have returned my stuff in the condition in which I lent it to them. If not, I guess you would have access to their contact details to chase them if you had to.

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Comment by: Neil ·
Date Stamp: Monday 12 December, 2005 at 08:15 AM

Looks really helpful Simon. Can you add more categories? Just having ‘religion’ is of limited use when most of the items listed would be of a ‘religious’ nature!

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Comment by: Simon ·
Date Stamp: Monday 12 December, 2005 at 10:45 AM

In regard to people returning stuff, there’s an obvious element of risk. But, with a rating system, I’m guessing people will want to avoid negative ratings in the context of a small church (although, people may be reluctant to give negative comments).

Neil, yep. For music, I added “Bible Talks”. Whilst “religious” books will probably be popular, no reason people couldn’t use it for fiction, tech stuff, even the increasing number of teachers in our ranks sharing resources

Permlink: 7 ·
Comment by: Daniel Fragar ·
Date Stamp: Tuesday 13 December, 2005 at 03:11 AM

Sounds like a plan – and possibly a method to encourage interactivity.

I’d certainly be willing to donate my copy of Graham Goldsworthy’s According to plan. I’ve started and departed that book at least 5 times. But my copy of Starship troopers seems to do the rounds of church quite successfully. On a more serious note, Leah and Tim have been putting together a youth group library, including christian cds and christian books aimed at youth.

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Comment by: Luke ·
Date Stamp: Tuesday 13 December, 2005 at 07:16 AM

i actually had a second thought about the library. There should be facility also to post book requests as well as searching the database. The only thing that i would say is that i would prefer a mediator to the loaning process that might depersonalise the matter a little. The owner of the book would still know who has the book. I appreciate this wold require a volunteer

Permlink: 9 ·
Comment by: Phone ·
Date Stamp: Tuesday 13 December, 2005 at 07:50 AM

I was given a heap of books a while ago to start a church library, and I know that mother’s union (or is it the ladies guild? ) have a library somewhere too. Rather than having to figure out a system in the church hall or somewhere like that, this online system sounds like a FANTASTIC solution. I think this shoudl definitly be part of the new website, and probably deserves some promotion at church.

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