[kwlug disc.] a bunch of books i'm willing to *loan* to the LUG

[Paul Nijjar]

On Wed, 21 Mar 2007 unsolicited at gto.net wrote:

> A nifty solution to this would certainly catch the attention of
> several here. e.g. Enter an ISBN number, details come in, references
> back to book's web site (for table of contents, sample chapters,
> etc.), member comments ('good book', 'not as easy a read as {this
> library} book'), who's got it, etc., etc., long term forward/backward
> compatibility with old/new entries, etc. I know nothing of Wiki's -
> don't know how/if it can do forms, etc., etc.

 	Somebody volunteer to be librarian (responsible for signouts and 
making sure that books get returned when the original owners want them 
back) and this can happen. The medium is irrelevant -- it could be a 
module or a wiki or whatever.

 	If "wiki" is meant to be shorthand for "the signout system will 
magically take care of itself!" then I think this is a bad idea. We don't 
need a formal librarian position, but we do need somebody who will be 
responsible for the job, just as people are responsible for mailing list 
administration, website maintenance, etc. now. That is what I see as the 
biggest bottleneck.

 	Right now nobody has committed to making sure signouts are 
enforced, accurate, etc. This is not a small job. This has not been a huge 
deal so far because we have so many books and people don't care about them 
enough to raise a fuss when somebody borrows one and doesn't return it 
promptly, but it could easily explode into an issue if/when people want 
their books back.

- Paul