Sharing Your Library

Sharing publicly is different from inviting a member. Members and guests sign in and see your working catalogue; the surfaces here are for anyone outside your Library, with no account at all. There are two: a public showcase — a curated, link-only page of covers you choose to show off — and the public OPAC, a full read-only catalogue a tiny library can let patrons browse. Both are off until an admin turns them on, both show only a stripped-down public view, and both go offline the moment you turn them off.

A showcase is a static, read-only page of your books at an unguessable public link — the way to show a shelf to a friend, a forum, or a buyer without giving anyone access to your account. You choose the scope when you create it: one of your tags, a shelf or location, or (as a deliberate choice) the whole library. Anyone with the link sees just the covers, titles, and authors of those books, plus a small "start your own" link back to AllMyBooks — nothing else.

1. Open My Library → Library tools → Settings → Showcases (creating one is for admins only).
2. Create a showcase: pick a scope (a tag, a shelf, or the whole library), give it a title, and create it.
3. Share the short link it produces (a "/s/…" address) — anyone who opens it sees the read-only page without signing in.
4. Revoke it any time from the same page; the link stops working immediately.

A showcase shows a minimized projection — covers, titles, and authors only. It never exposes values, what you paid, where a book is kept, provenance, loan or read status, notes, or who’s in your Library. Showcase pages aren’t indexed by search engines and aren’t listed anywhere, so a showcase is reachable only by the exact link you share. Each book links through to its own public book page, which shows no more than any visitor would already see there.

Only an admin can create or revoke a showcase, and none exists until one is created. It’s the most open, most privacy-sensitive share in the product — so it’s off by default, always scoped on purpose, and instantly revocable.

The OPAC (a public catalogue) is for a tiny library that wants patrons to see everything it holds. Where a showcase is a curated highlight reel, the OPAC is the whole collection, browsable and searchable at a friendly public address — no sign-in, no account. It rides on tiny-library mode: an admin enables the mode, then publishes the catalogue at a slug of their choosing, and it lives at that address (a "/l/your-slug" URL) until turned off.

1. From My Library → Library tools → Settings → Tiny-library mode, enable the mode, then turn on "Publish a public catalogue (OPAC)".
2. Choose a public address (a short slug — lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens); the page becomes reachable at "/l/your-slug".
3. Share that link — anyone can browse and search the catalogue without signing in. Search only ever returns books from your library.
4. Turn the OPAC off any time; the public page goes offline immediately.

The OPAC shows catalogue-level data only — title, author, cover, and a coarse "available or all out" indicator per title. It never reveals prices, private notes, private locations, member identities, or which copy or person has a checked-out book out. Availability says only whether a copy is free to borrow, not who holds it; a copy your library has marked missing simply counts as not free — the word "missing" never appears there.

The OPAC is Admin-enabled and off by default; it exists only while tiny-library mode is on and the catalogue is published. Disabling either takes the public page offline at once.

• Tiny-library patron checkout →
• Sharing a Library →
• AllMyBooks for church libraries →
• Privacy — what’s shared and what stays private →

A printed book label’s QR code names one copy, but it grants nothing. Someone who scans it — a visitor, a borrower, anyone who picks the book up — sees only the public book page anyone can find: title, author, cover and description. It does not say that your library owns the book, where it is shelved, who has it, or which library it belongs to. Only a signed-in Admin or Member of the copy’s library sees the copy itself.

When you share a book with the Share button on its page, the link is always the plain book link — never the copy — even if you arrived from a copy label. Signed in, the copy part of a label’s link is also removed from your address bar as soon as the page opens, so copying the address does not pass it on.

• Printable shelf & book labels →