Keep all books in one place

[pkafei]

I think logistically, and design-wise it would be better if we could keep the books in one place. That way our library would be easier to keep track of and building the app would be more straight-forward. Our model would be a one(library) to two(those who took a book out, those who want a book) relationship as opposed to a many(books in different places) to two(those who took a book out, those who want a book) relationship.

We could talk more about this on Saturday, or next week.

[jarrighi]

Not having a central place to keep the books was actually the motivation for this project. I agree that having the books in one place would be nice, but where is that place? It means one person has to do a lot more work in managing the library. Many people participating in the library means that work is distributed to anyone participating in the project. Sure, there is probably a somewhat increased chance that books will be lost, but I don't think it will be significant. Even if the library were in one place there would still be many books. Instead of the books being physically in the same place, there are virtually in one place by being tracked by this app. I also don't think the current model is actually that complicated but I'd be happy to continue this discussion if many people disagree.

I see it more like this, described as a sort of pseudo-schema:

Books:

• book details
• user who has the book
• users who wants the book

Users:

• user details

Or maybe:
Books

• Book details

Users

• user details

Books-Users

• User
• book
• Relationships: wants or has (maybe even had)