Bookshelf Features — Everything a Book Lover Needs
A modern personal library app built for serious readers. Track what you own, what you've read, and what you want to read next — all in one place, free.
Personal Book Library
Build your complete digital book collection in minutes. Bookshelf lets you catalogue every book you own, have read, or want to read. Organise your library with reading statuses — "to-read", "currently reading", and "finished" — and add personal ratings and private notes to any title. The fastest way to add books is by scanning the barcode on the back cover with your phone camera: Bookshelf reads the ISBN and pulls in the full metadata automatically, including title, author, cover art, description, publisher, and page count.
- Barcode scanning via phone camera — add books in seconds with ISBN lookup
- Reading statuses: to-read, currently reading, and read
- 5-star ratings and private notes on every book
- Manual book entry for titles not yet in the catalog
- Full cover art, descriptions, publisher, page count, and more
- Search and filter your collection by title, author, status, or rating
Series Tracking
Never lose track of where you are in a series again. Bookshelf automatically groups your books into series and shows you exactly how complete your collection is for each one. The series view displays a visual completion percentage for every series in your library, so you can instantly see which ones need attention. Browse over 2,000 curated series in the public catalog, complete with reading order, book counts, and cover art. The missing books feature scans your collection against known series data and highlights any gaps — so you always know which book to buy next.
- Automatic series grouping for books already in your collection
- Series completion percentage displayed for every series
- Missing books detection — identifies gaps in your collection
- Browse 2,000+ series in the public catalog
- Sort and filter series by name, author, completion, or book count
- Status labels per series: Active, Wanted, Complete, or Ignored
Reading Compass (AI Recommendations)
Finding your next great read shouldn't feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Reading Compass is Bookshelf's AI-powered recommendation engine that learns your tastes and surfaces books you're likely to love. Tell it your current mood, preferred genres, and how obscure or mainstream you want your next pick to be — a simple slider takes you from bestselling crowd-pleasers to hidden gems. You can also give positive and negative signals to fine-tune suggestions in real time: tell it what you've enjoyed recently or what to avoid, and the recommendations update immediately.
- AI-powered recommendations tuned to your personal reading history
- Mood and genre preference settings
- Popularity slider — from obscure literary finds to mainstream bestsellers
- Positive and negative signal inputs to shape suggestions
- Recommendations refresh as your library grows
Book Clubs
Reading is better together. Bookshelf's book clubs let you create or join reading groups — either open to the public or private with an invite code. Every club has a current book, a shared discussion board with threaded posts and spoiler protection, and a meeting scheduler so your group can coordinate in-person or virtual sessions. Members can log their reading progress on the current book, see how far others have got, and vote in polls to choose what to read next. At the end of each book, members leave ratings and reviews that become part of the club's permanent reading history. AI-generated discussion questions help kick off conversations for each new title.
- Create or join public and private book clubs
- Threaded discussion posts with spoiler-protection toggle
- Reading progress tracking per member for the current book
- Polls to vote on the next read, with book cover options
- Meeting scheduler with date, location, and notes
- Reading history with member ratings and reviews per book
- AI-generated discussion questions for every new title
- Annual reading challenge tracker for the whole club
Explore 51 Million Books
Bookshelf connects to the OpenLibrary catalog, giving you access to over 51 million book records without needing an account. Search by title, author, or ISBN to find detailed information on virtually any book ever published. Each book has its own public page with cover art, synopsis, publication details, editions, and series information. Author pages list every title in the catalog with covers and series links. Series pages show the complete reading order, all available editions, and how many people in the Bookshelf community own each title. Everything is publicly accessible so search engines can index it and readers can discover great books organically.
- Search over 51 million books from the OpenLibrary catalog
- Search by title, author, or ISBN barcode
- Public book pages with covers, descriptions, and publication info
- Author pages with complete title listings
- Series pages with reading order and edition details
- No account required to browse the public catalog
Social Reading
Bookshelf is more than a personal catalogue — it's a community of readers. Follow friends and see what they're reading, rating, and adding to their collections in real time on the activity feed. Leave reviews and ratings on any book, and read reviews from the wider community to help you decide what to pick up next. Discover users with similar reading tastes through the Discover page, send book recommendations directly to friends, and build your social reading network one great recommendation at a time.
- Follow friends and see their reading activity
- Real-time activity feed for your reading network
- Write reviews and 5-star ratings on any book
- Discover readers with similar tastes
- Send and receive book recommendations from friends
- Public reading profiles with shelves and recent activity
Reading Goals and Stats
Set a yearly reading goal and track your progress throughout the year. Bookshelf's stats dashboard shows you a rich picture of your reading habits: genre breakdowns, books read per month, your longest reading streak, and a full year-in-review summary at the end of each December. Log individual reading sessions with start and end times to track how long you spend reading each day. All your stats are visualised with clean charts so you can see how your reading habits evolve over time.
- Annual reading goals with live progress tracking
- Year-in-review summary at year end
- Genre breakdown charts for your collection and reading history
- Books read per month graph
- Reading streak counter — days in a row you logged reading time
- Reading session timer to log daily reading time
Import and Export
Already have a library catalogued elsewhere? Bookshelf makes it easy to migrate. Upload a CSV export from Goodreads, LibraryThing, or any other book cataloging service and Bookshelf will match each entry to the right book record automatically. The mobile barcode scanner lets you work through physical shelves quickly: scan one book, it's added, scan the next. Bookshelf is a Progressive Web App (PWA) which means you can install it on your phone's home screen and use it offline — perfect for scanning books away from home.
- Bulk CSV import compatible with Goodreads and LibraryThing exports
- Automatic ISBN and title matching on import
- Mobile barcode scanner PWA — works offline and installs to home screen
- Export your collection to CSV at any time
Shopping List and Wishlist
Keep a running wishlist of books you want to acquire. The shopping list syncs across all your devices and lets you add books manually, from the catalog, or automatically via the missing books feature. When Bookshelf detects that your series collection has gaps, it can add the missing titles straight to your wishlist with one tap — so the next time you visit a bookshop or browse online, you always know exactly what to look for.
- Persistent wishlist synced across all devices
- Add books from catalog search or manually
- Automatically populate from missing series books
- Mark items as purchased when you pick them up
Security and Privacy
Your reading life is personal. Bookshelf is built with privacy-first principles: your collection is private by default, and you control exactly what others can see. Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and never stored in plaintext. Authentication uses short-lived JWT tokens so sessions can be revoked instantly if needed. Account and settings pages are blocked from search engine crawling, and no tracking pixels or third-party advertising scripts are included.
- Private shelves by default — you control visibility
- Passwords hashed with bcrypt, never stored in plaintext
- JWT authentication with revocable tokens
- No third-party advertising or tracking scripts
- Account and settings pages blocked from search engines
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