Basically I, and I think alot of people, often feel pretty ambiguously towards their old books. If they were any good, they have affection for them and have a vague feeling that sometime they'll want to read them again - but also, that until that time here is a ready store of information/fantastic wonderfulness that is lying on the shelf, useless except to boost a possibly unhealthy 'look how many books I have' feeling.
So the idea is to establish a website that allows people to set up a list of all the books they have that they're willing to share, for whatever amount of time, with others. A user, providing ze has a list of their own, will be able to send a request to any other user for any of their books. Either the borrowing length will be implicit in the interaction - i.e. perhaps it was included in the book listing - or the sender and requestor will enter into a short correspondence talking about length of time the book could be borrowed for, care of book, etc. The only money involved will be the small posting fee, which either the sender will pay because of hir spirit of mutual aid, or the requestor will pay via paypal. When the requestor has finished with the book, it's merrily sent back to the original owner.
A few safeguards, such as a 'user rating' system similar to Ebay's to record transactions gone wrong, and a limitation system whereby a user has to have lent at least 1 book for every 5 or 10 borrowed, would hopefully largely guarantee the safety of the system.
So, what does the learned population of Barbelith think? Do you think such an idea would work - is people's trust/reliability great enough? (Or does such a site exist already somewhere?) Also, how easy would it be to set up for someone with limited website skills? I'm guessing it would require some aid... |
