

Ask HN: An idea for a dispersed Library of Alexandria - jayzee

From Wikipedia: The Royal Library of Alexandria seems to have been the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world.<p>Today:
I live in an area surrounded by many universities and students. I have a ton of books at home and I am sure so do the others around me. But I don't know what books they have and they don't know what I have. It is hard to share books and it would be great to be able to share them and get to know people who have the same reading interests as you...<p>Solution:
People can upload the titles of their books and create an account with a zip-code. With the zip-code when people search for a book they can see who closest to them has the book that they need. They can request to borrow it etc.<p>Tweak 1:
Getting people to upload a list of their books can be tricky. One solution would be for them to take a high-res photo of their bookshelves and using OCR to identify the books. I did a mock trial on my bookshelf and it worked ok<p>Tweak 2:
Search results could be anonymous. You could request it and the person you requested the book from you could see who you were and decide if they wanted to share with you.<p>Would love to hear if people think that something like this would work? If people would want this? Have you wished that sharing books was easier?
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michael_dorfman
How about you just go to your library, and ask for a book via Inter-Library
Loan if they don't have it in their collection?

Your proposal seems to me to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

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jayzee
Thanks for your comment! My response below:

1\. The ILL does not often have the latest popular books.

2\. Besides not everybody in the community has access to the university
library system.

3\. Also this would be a way to create a community around sharing books.

I had this idea because in the developing world (where I grew up) people often
visit each other's homes and people borrow books because they see what you
have in your shelves etc and you talk about the book you borrowed with the
person who had it. It creates a community around books something that would be
a nice to have?

