With the high cost of physical books, owning a personal library (even one of just a bookshelf or two) is an expense. These bookshelves often become a public library to one's friendship circle, borrowing books with the promise of returning. Things can happen during this lending process, however: Friends lose touch, books get lost, one or both parties forget about the exchange, etc. For people who loan books to friends often, it is easy to forget who borrowed which book. These things can all lead to further costs to replace the missing book. Because of this, I set out to create an application that would allow users to create a digital inventory of their books, along with a way to track lent out books.

After developing the specifications for the application, I used PHP and MySQL to created systems which utilizes Amazon's API and developed a way for a user to put their book in the system by taking a picture of the book's barcode.

What started as just a one purpose project, however, has grown. Currently, I am expanding this system and developing it into a checkout-system for Michigan State University's College of Arts & Letters' video equipment. Since the college uses a CakePHP framework for all their applications I am currently working to translate my PHP into this MVC framework.

Before starting this project it was necessary to provide a rational for the application as while as define the application's features; this was recorded in a white paper. Additionally, I analyzed similar websites and applications and created a competitive analysis comparing my product's features to existing product features.

I then laid out the functionality by creating workflows of the back-end logic, which allowed me to work through the logic behind the code I would be writing. Additionally, I created wireframes for the different views of the site. I then translated these designs and specifications into a functioning application. This was a learning process and I am currently working to improve the code and loading time of the application. For now, the beta of this application can be seen here and tested using the email: email@testing.com and Password: password

The College of Arts & Letter's Doclab rents video equipment to students for projects and video assignments. Currently, the Doclab manager is keeping track of the checkouts in a spreadsheet, which has been rather ineffective. Upon seeing my checkout system, she proposed we develop a similar system for the Doclab. Because the Doclab had different needs than my original system, I sat down with the manager and discussed the specific needs of the site. She then created wireframes and coded the website in HTML and CSS. I took these files and "baked" them into CakePHP and worked with another developer to implement the backend code.

This system is currently in development

One of the features in this book checkout system is the use of Amazon's API. This keeps information consistent and makes it easier for users to add a book to their library by minimizing the information they need to enter. Part of this was implementing an autocomplete in the search bar. Using javascript and jquery, I created an autocomplete that pulls titles from Amazon.

The results from the search also utilizes Amazon's API. Since this application is currently devoted to books specifically, the results include only books. The User can then select their book from the list, enter any additional information needed and add it to their inventory.