Libraries and bookshops use books as their catalog instead of menu items or services. These tools are available only to businesses in the library or bookshop category.
What every book can hold
A book can include its title, author, ISBN, publisher, publication year, genre, language, format, series, volume, stock status and quantity. Its physical location has up to four parts: place, room, shelf and rack.
Books also have independent out and lost statuses, both off by default. Out means the book is away from a known location, such as borrowed; lost means nobody can account for it.
Adding books
Send a typed list, CSV file or photo to the owner-connected chat. Typed lists and CSV files are drafted for review: send CONFIRM to apply them or UNDO to revert them.
Photos are reviewed one book at a time. Each recognised book has Confirm and Skip controls, and a typed correction changes that book before it is saved. Confirmed books are stored immediately, so stopping halfway keeps the ones already confirmed.
Locations from a photo caption
Use the caption for the location in this order: place, room, shelf, rack. With commas, each part can contain several words, such as Main library, History aisle, Shelf 3, top; leave a middle part blank with an empty comma segment. Without commas, the caption is split on spaces, one word per field.
A caption can instead state a status — for example out, borrowed, on loan, back or returned — which applies to every book in the photo without changing location. A photo with no caption has no location until you add one later.
Shelf-status commands
- OUT title marks a book as away; IN title puts it back.
- LOST title marks a book unaccounted for; FIND title clears that status.
- Sending OUT or LOST without a title lists every book in that state.
These commands apply immediately. The statuses are independent, but recording any location clears both because the book is then known to be there.
Searching your catalog
Use SEARCH author: Eco, or comma-separated field: value filters, to narrow results; filters are combined. aisle: also works as an alias for room:.
Otherwise, SEARCH followed by a title, author or location finds books. A comma-separated term is read as a location from place through rack; without commas it matches titles, authors, ISBNs and all location fields. Up to 100 matches are returned in full; larger results tell you the true count and ask you to add a filter or use the browse cursor.
Editing and renaming a book
Ask the owner assistant to change a book, naming its current title and only the fields that should change. It stages the edit for confirmation; unmentioned fields stay as they are.
Request a rename explicitly. Re-importing a book under a corrected title creates a second book and leaves the original. A rename is refused if the title is missing, too vague, or already used by another book.