The
Distributed
Library.

The idea

So this is an idea that has been bouncing around in my head for some time.

Basically, at some point a few months into the lockdown I was chatting with a friend who lives in Helsinki who had asked for book recommendations. We made a few, and a few days later he got his hands on the books through the amazing network of connected public libraries in Finland.

At the same time, I was somewhat limited to either buying any book I wanted to read on the kindle, or having to rely solely on the books we had on hand at home (which had quite a few unread ones, but still). I couldn’t access any of the books at my parents’ house a few minutes away thanks to restrictions.

So I got thinking about how there needs to be a way to catalog personal collections, and then make those visible to others in a way that creates a virtual, distributed library of sorts.

When you want a book, you search this library of libraries and figure out who has the book, and borrow it from them.

This is a small, Bengaluru-based pilot. No app. No startup. Just a group of readers sharing books with each other, properly tracked so nobody loses a favourite.

How it works

• 01You offer at least 20–25 books from your shelf into the shared pool. You pick which ones — doesn't have to be everything.
• 02Everyone in the group can search across all collections and request a book from whoever has it.
• 03You get in touch directly, or swap at the monthly Swapbook meetup. If you're not part of Swapbook (JOIN!) else I'm happy to host a Cooke Town meetup at my place.
• 04I'll set it up, and we'll use Libib to track who has what — so borrowed books don't vanish into the void.

The rules (such as they are)