Why

Most book tracking software focuses solely on the cover page and a text description, but we tend to store our books on shelves relating the book itself to the spine and its dimensional size. How can we mimic this physical experience as a digital one through the web?

How

Every spine is scanned then set to a pixel ratio based on its real dimensions. The archive is the shelf, reproduced on the web, browsable from anywhere.

Impact

Personal archive of books I’ve read · Built and maintained independently

The shelf is the interface. Spines sit at their own heights and widths, exactly as they do in the room, so recognition works the way it does physically. You find a book by remembering that it is the tall black one near the middle, not by typing its title.

Hovering a spine dims the rest of the shelf and brings the title forward, numbered by its position in the archive. The book you are looking at is foregrounded, but the rest of the collection stays visible behind it, which keeps any single book in the context of everything around it.

A persistent footer holds three things: the name of the archive, the current time, and whatever I am reading right now. The clock makes the page feel less like a static list and more like a room you are currently standing in, and the currently reading slot keeps the archive open-ended.

The project is small on purpose. It does not recommend, rate, or socialize.