= Alexandria

Version:      0.6.4
Release Date: 2008-03-14
Home Page:    http://alexandria.rubyforge.org/

Alexandria is a GNOME application for managing collections of books.

Alexandria is written in Ruby, and is free software, distributed under
the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later. See
the file COPYING for more information.


== Features

Alexandria is a simple program designed to allow individuals to keep a
catalogue of their book collection. In addition, it enables users to
keep track of books which are on loan.

    * retrieves and displays book information (sometimes with cover
      pictures) from several online libraries and bookshops, such as
          o Amazon
          o Proxis
          o DeaStore
          o AdLibris
          o Spanish Ministry of Culture
          o Livraria Siciliano
          o WorldCat
          o US Library of Congress
          o British Library
    * allows books to be added and updated by hand
    * enables searches either by ISBN, title, author or keyword
    * supports the Z39.50 standard and allow you to manage your own
      sources (e.g. university libraries)
    * saves data using the plain-text YAML format
    * can import and export data into ONIX, Tellico, ISBN-list
      and GoodReads CSV formats
    * can export XHTML web pages of your libraries, themable with CSS
    * allows marking your books as loaned, each with the loan-date and
      the name of the person who has borrowed them
    * features a HIG-compliant user interface
    * shows books in different views (standard list or icons list),
      that can be filtered and/or sorted
    * handles book rating and notes
    * supports CueCat and standard "keyboard wedge" barcode readers
    * includes translations for several languages
    * is documented in a complete manual (at the moment only in
      English and Japanese)

Alexandria is not without problems. See doc/BUGS for a summary of issues.


== 0.6.4 Release

For full release notes, see the file NEWS.


== Installation

There are full instructions for installing Alexandria from source in the 
file INSTALL, including information about all the dependencies.

If you are installing on a Debian-based system, things should be
easier as the dependencies can be handled automatically (although, at
the moment, there is no up-to-date Debian package for Ruby/ZOOM - you
will have to install it from source, see INSTALL for details).

To run the program, just type
    alexandria
or, to get verbose debugging information,
    alexandria --debug

If you are running GNOME, Alexandria should appear under the
'Applications > Office' menu.