Your library and shelves on the phone

1. Open the Library tab to see the active library’s books, with covers, titles, and authors. Scroll and more load as you go; pull down to refresh.
2. Use "Search your shelves" to find a book you own. This searches your own collection only — if nothing matches, it says so rather than showing books from the wider catalogue you’d have to buy. Typing an ISBN, LCCN or barcode number finds that exact edition, in either ISBN form.
3. Tap a book to open it. The detail screen shows its cover, the particulars the catalogue holds — publisher, published date, edition, pages, series, ISBN and LCCN — how many copies you hold, whether one is out on loan, and the jacket description.
4. The want list is under More on the Library tab, for books the Library means to acquire but doesn’t own yet. "Add a book" there records one by title, "Check a book" searches by title, and tapping an entry offers "I acquired this", which asks whether your copy is the wanted edition before adding it.

The Library tab shows the collection two ways, and the buttons beside the search box switch between them. Rows is the default and is the one for a task — the title, the authors, and how many copies you hold, read down the page. Covers turns the same list into a grid of cover art, which is the one for browsing your shelves. Both scroll and refresh the same way, and whichever you choose is remembered on that phone.

Two pickers say how the list is ordered and how much of it you are looking at. They come down under the search box when you tap it, and go back up when you scroll the list. The first orders it: Recently added, which is the default and what the tab has always shown, by title A–Z or Z–A for when you are looking for one book rather than seeing what is new, by author A–Z — surname first, and each author’s books by title — or in shelf order by Dewey or LC call number for standing at a classified shelf with the phone in hand. The second narrows it to a single room or shelf — the retrieval moment, standing in front of one bookcase — and while it is set, the list, its count, and the count on the picker itself describe only the books recorded there, including anything on a shelf inside it, and one tap on the ✕ beside it gives the whole library back. Under the pickers, a row of chips narrows the list another way: Unread and Read are your own reading — the books you have or have not marked as read — and On loan shows the books with a copy lent out (a guest is not offered On loan, because loans are not shown to guests). The chosen chip carries the count, and tapping it again shows all books. While a shelf or a chip is chosen the pickers stay in view, so the list always says it is narrowed. Your ordering is remembered on that phone; the shelf and the chip are not, because they say what you were looking for rather than how you like to read. They all step aside while you search, and none of them narrows a search — searching your shelves always answers across the whole library.

Where your Library has photographed a book’s cover, that photograph is what the app shows — in the list, on the book, and in scan results — in preference to the catalogue’s artwork. A book with neither gets a plain typographic tile rather than a blank, with its title readable, so it is still findable in the covers grid.

The line under the library’s name gives figures for the whole library: how many books it holds and, beside that, the total number of pages. Under More, Stats to show lets you choose up to two figures for that line — pages, authors, value or how complete the records are. Pages counts as one of the two until you remove it, and the choice is kept on that phone. The value is in your library’s currency. When some books are priced in other currencies, they are converted at the European Central Bank’s daily reference rates and the figure is marked as approximate ("≈$4,180 value"); More says which currencies were converted and the date of the rates. Each book keeps its own price and currency — only the total is converted — and a currency the bank publishes no rate for is left out and named ("not counting RUB"). The figures describe the library rather than whatever you are searching for, so while you search the line gives the number of matches instead. A figure with nothing behind it is left out rather than shown as a zero, and a guest sees the book count only.

More, at the end of that line, opens what the tab keeps out of the way: the want list, loans and Scan a shelf. While a loan is overdue, More itself says how many are. Below them, the completeness figure explains itself, because a percentage on its own never says what it is a percentage of. It lists the three things that figure counts — a cover and a page count for every book, and a shelf for every copy — each with how many carry it. "310 of 412 books" have a cover; shelving is counted in copies ("398 of 450 copies"), because where a copy stands is a fact of that copy, and two copies of one book can be in different places or only one of them shelved. A number like that is one you can act on in a way that "75% complete" is not. Only what the library actually measures is listed. Below that, where your library has the data, come its physical figures: total pages, total weight, the average book size, and the most common bindings, each saying how many books it covers.

To remove a copy, open the book and choose Remove from library, or Remove a copy where you hold more than one. It asks first, and tells you how many copies remain. Removing your copy takes it off your shelves; it doesn’t delete the book’s record. A copy out on loan is not removed — mark it returned first. For 30 days a removed copy can be restored, with its notes, photos and custom fields, from Library activity on the website (the phone app has no activity page); after that it is permanently deleted. A restored book shows up on the phone the next time the app refreshes the library.

Tidying a library happens standing in front of it, which is exactly where a desk is not. Settings → Library setup lists the active library’s rooms, bookcases, shelves and boxes as they nest — children indented beneath whatever holds them — and lets you build and tend that geography with the book still in your hand. It is the same locations hierarchy as Library Setup on the website, on the same library: a shelf made here is on the website when you next look, and vice versa.

1. Open the Settings tab and choose Library setup.
2. Choose New to add a top-level place — a home or a storage area — and give it a name.
3. Tap any place to rename it, set or clear what you expect to find there, add another inside it, or delete it. The kinds on offer follow the same nesting rules as the website: homes and storage areas hold bookcases, bookcases hold shelves and boxes, and a shelf or a box holds books rather than more furniture — so there is no "add inside" on those.
4. Renaming opens on the current name, changes nothing but what the place is called, and leaves every book where it is.

Deleting asks first and says what goes with it, because both consequences are invisible from that screen: anything nested inside the place is deleted along with it, and books kept anywhere in it stay in your library but lose their shelf — they become books with no recorded location, not deleted books. Renaming is offered first-class precisely so a typo never needs a delete.

Each place also reports what it can about how full it is, which is the point of opening this screen part-way through cataloguing — see "How full a shelf is" in Organizing for what the numbers mean. They are the same numbers as on the website, in the same words.

A shelf added here is immediately selectable everywhere the app asks where a book lives — the confirmation screen after a scan included — so you can make the shelf and file the book onto it in one pass.

You don’t have to come here first, either. Every place in the app that asks where a book lives — the screen after a scan, adding a book by hand, naming the shelf you are photographing, and moving a copy — carries "Add a location…" as well, and it asks the same three things this screen does: a name, what it sits inside, and what kind of place it is. The kinds on offer follow the parent you chose, so a shelf is always made inside something that holds shelves. A location made that way is in Library setup the moment you look, indistinguishable from one made here, and it becomes the chosen place for the book or the photograph you were in the middle of.

Library setup is available to admins and members, and needs a signal: with none, the list still shows what was last loaded but adding, renaming and deleting are held back rather than failing. Guests read a library and are offered no Library setup entry at all — nor any "Add a location…" anywhere else in the app.

Books move. A copy lent, borrowed back, carried upstairs or filed on the wrong shelf in the first place is the ordinary case, and putting it right is something you do standing in front of the shelf rather than back at a desk. A book’s detail screen carries "Where it is kept", which names the shelf recorded for it now — or says plainly that none is — and the button underneath changes it.

1. Open the book and choose "Move it", or "Put it on a shelf" where nothing is recorded yet.
2. Where your Library holds more than one copy, say which one is moving. The copies are told apart by where they are kept and what condition they are in, the same way the copies screen names them.
3. Choose where it goes from the Library’s own rooms and shelves — or "Add a location…" if you are standing in front of a place the catalogue has never heard of.

Taking a copy off its shelf without putting it on another is offered too, as "Not on a shelf". It is its own choice rather than something you achieve by backing out: the copy keeps its record and everything else about it, and simply has no recorded location — exactly like a copy added without one. Only the copy you chose moves; another copy of the same book stays where it was.

The move shows on the website the next time it reads the Library, and on the phone it reaches the book, the list and the shelf counts at once without a refresh.

Available to Library admins and members. Guests see no "Where it is kept" section at all. It needs a signal, and the screen says so before you reach for the button: a move is never queued for later, because walking away believing a book is somewhere it is not is worse than being told to try again.