Data acquisition

• Manual entry
• Automated/bulk entry
  • via textfile (list of ISBNs/ISSNs)
  • via barcode-scanner
    • Keyboard wedge (generic)
    • CueCat (encrypted)
    • SE-955 (API)
    • Networked
  • via RFID

Data storage

• Keep details of a book collection, including title, authors, publisher, binding, format (could be e-book, or audio book – besides traditional physical bindings: PDF, mp3, CD, etc), picture of book cover (front and back), publication year, and category (Fiction, History, Biography, etc).
  • Optional subtitle, number of pages, summary, language
• Usually store ISBN/ISSN (support ISBN-10 and ISBN-13), including handling invalid as published ISBNs/ISSNs.
• Optionally store other identifying codes, including SBN, ASN.
• Allow more than one copy of a book in a collection. (or set # of copies of a single book)
  • Some multiple copies will have distinguishing characteristics.
  • Some multiple copies will be indistinguishable.
• Optional edition notes
  • edition number
  • printing number
  • condition notes
  • signed?
  • out of print?
  • print-on-demand
  • first edition?
  • part of series
  • place of purchase
  • gift? (from who)
  • price paid and current worth
• Extended information tab?
  • amazon provides more data than we’re saving
  • even if we can’t figure out a good way to display it right now, we might want to save it anyway for future reference.
  • Or instead of saving the content right now, we could include an update mechanism that, user initiated, would populate newly created fields with data from amazon on books that are already included.

Data retrieval

• It should be possible to query any of the stored book attributes to retrieve a subset of the collection.
• Combined queries should be possible.
• Filtered views may be saved based upon combined queries.