February 2014 – Jason Griffey

LibraryBox v2.0 Public Beta

Today I am more than pleased to announce the launch of the public beta release of LibraryBox v2.0. From the announcement page on the website:

After months of work, the v2.0 codebase for the LibraryBox Project has reached Release Candidate 1, which means it’s time for a Public Beta! There are a huge number of improvements, enhancements, and all around awesome things in the v2.0. I recommend you take a look at the About v2.0 page to see the highlights.

Just a reminder about what “Public Beta” means. This is absolutely releasable code, or I wouldn’t put it out there…but no code is fully tested until it’s deployed into the world. I’ve built over a dozen LibraryBoxen using this code, tested them, changed settings and set up Sync networks, FTP’d into them, and just about every other thing I could think of to make sure it was stable. There was a private beta among just a very small handful of testers, but to really make sure that this is ready for prime time, it needs to be in the public. So that’s what we’re doing.

Almost certainly this code will be the full release v2.0 code. But if one of you brave souls discovers something that we didn’t, I want to be able to fix it before we are officially at v2.0.

I hope you enjoy the code. Please build your own, upgrade your existing LibraryBox 1.5 to the v2.0, or better yet, buy a pre-built LibraryBox and help support the project towards the v2.5 release.

There’s a lot more coming regarding the release, including a couple of video tutorials and screenshots. But perfect is the enemy of the good, so I’m getting the code out before the website is totally ready. I’ll keep adding to the site as we move quickly towards the full release of the v2.0…if the public beta goes as expected, I imagine that will be very quick in coming.

LibraryBox needs Librarians

Hello all you librarian types! Want to help out on the most awesome open source library project going today? If so, read on…

As a part of the Kickstarter Project for LibraryBox v2.0 (which is literally days away from being available), I asked people to provide me with a piece of content that they wanted included on the shipping LibraryBoxen. Well, they did, and it’s an amazing list of good stuff…unfortunately, it’s too much of a good thing, because even if I worked on it during every free hour I have, it would take me too long to get it done.

Because it requires a bit of knowledge (ebook file types, naming conventions) I can’t just throw it open to the world…but who better to help me sort out a collection of content than librarians? So here’s what I’m asking for help with: Below you’ll see two bookmarks. The first is to the open Google Doc of all of the content that people requested. The second is to an upload form.

If I could get a bit of crowdsourcing help, that would be amazing. Here’s the way I think it should work:

Awesome Librarian #1 hits the google doc, and marks a row “busy” by making it yellow.
They then click the link and download the content in question.
They check the file, rename it if necessary, and then upload it using the form.
When it’s done, mark the Google doc for that piece of content Green for done. Easy, peasey, and if a few people join in, it will all be done in no time.

Ground Rules

Filenames should be Title by Author.filetype, for instance: Dune by Frank Herbert.epub
For ebooks, if there are multiple filetypes, grab both the epub and the Kindle version.
If the content is not clearly licensed, the link is bad, or any other reason to be concerned about the content, mark the row Red.
Use your judgment as to problems or issues…this is why I want librarians doing it instead of crowdsourcing it in general. Use the notes field in the Google Doc for feedback as to why there was a problem.
If you would like a Thank You credit in the LibraryBox v2.0 code, drop me an email and let me know how you’d like to be credited (griffey at gmail) and I’ll add you to the credits.

Google Doc for Content

Upload Form

Thank you in advance for ANY help at all, and I’m curious to see how quickly this can be done if it’s run in parallel instead of serial. Thanks for all the help.