Lending

1. Open the book’s detail page and find its Lending section.
2. Click Lend (or "Lend this copy" when the book has more than one copy).
3. Choose the borrower — someone with an AllMyBooks account, or someone tracked by name only (a free-text name, like a friend or a tiny-library patron). An account holder sees the loan under their own "Borrowed by me" only when you share a library or a book club; any other address is kept as a contact with that email, tracked for you alone.
4. Optionally set a due date and a note, then confirm "Lend copy."

Click "Mark returned" on the loan — either from the book’s own Lending section or from the Loans page.

The Loans page — the Loans button in the My Library header, or Library tools → Lending → Loans — lists everything currently on loan from your library, with overdue loans flagged, and a "Nudge borrower" option when the borrower has their own account — at most one reminder per loan per day (tiny libraries also get "Email nudge" for patrons with an email address, plus a printable / CSV report). A separate "Borrowed by me" section shows books you’ve borrowed from elsewhere and don’t own yourself. While any loan is overdue, the home page of every Admin and Member leads its tasks with it — "2 overdue loans", the same number as the Loans page’s overdue badge — and Open Loans comes here; you can dismiss that task from your own home without changing any loan (see Your home, tasks and tools — Your home’s tasks).

On the Library page, toggle the "Available" filter to hide any book with no copy you can pick up right now — every copy is out on loan, or marked missing — useful when you’re standing at the shelf and want to know what you can actually take.

Lending and returning copies is available to Library admins and members; guests cannot lend books and won’t see lending controls.

Lending a copy to someone by name and marking it returned can also be done from the phone app, which is where the doorway moment usually happens, and the app has its own Loans screen — what’s out, overdue first, what you’re borrowing, with return and nudge. Lending to a borrower with their own account and patron checkout stay on the website.

Checking a shelf never touches a loan. A copy out on loan when a shelf check is finished is listed in the review as on loan, and stays lent — even if it was found on the shelf — until someone marks it returned. A copy out on loan cannot be marked missing either: it is accounted for.

A copy marked missing cannot be lent or checked out — not from its book page, not at the circulation desk, not from the phone — until it is marked found. Its Lending section says "Marked missing since …" instead of offering Lend; open the copy’s card on the book page (or a shelf check’s review, if a check saw it) and press "Mark found", and it can be lent again. In a book club, your own missing copy of the pick shows "marked missing in your library" to you alone and has no Lend button; the other members see nothing about it.

• The Phone App — lending at the door →
• Checking a shelf →

A classroom, a church shelf or a community library can turn its Library into a tiny library: an admin enables the mode, patrons are kept as lightweight records, and books are checked out and in at the circulation desk.

• Tiny-library patron checkout →

A book club is a small group that chooses a shared next read from the books its members already own between them, then lends the winning copy to whoever reads it next.

• Book clubs →