What's New

The big news is that the site went live! I unlocked the gate and had my first new visitors and users stroll in on August 1st. That means I was confident enough in the code not to cause any catostrophic errors or terrible experiences for anyone. So far, no injuries reported.

I was genuinely thrilled when I saw the first book, and table of contents, were input from a user. Thank you Doug N. for adding Harry Lorayne's Close-Up Card Magic into the archive. I'm impressed that Doug did it without any instruction or guidance, but just by clicking around and figuring it out. I will be making some helpful tutorials, but happy to hear it can be done intuitively.

Most of the work was just cleaning things up, most notably a much-improved UI for tagging and adding roles.

Add by ISBN

While it's rare for magic books, some of them do have an ISBN which provides a unique identifier for books worldwide and, in theory, can be used to look up a basic catalogue entry for each book. If you find a magic book with an ISBN (often found on the copyright info page) you can go to Add A Title by ISBN and fast-forward the creation process.

... In theory! As a developer it's upsetting that this worldwide identification system has no central database to look up entries. I'm using a service which scrapes together data from various sources, but it can be hit and miss. My own book, despite having a registered ISBN with the Government of Canada, is absent from the listings.

Also, "while supplies last." This ISBN database is a monthly paid service and I don't plan to keep it active at all times. I'm using it now to load in as many magical ISBNs as I can find, then I expect to suspend my subscription until the demand rises.

Once I built the ISBN entry form I dug out my barcode scanner to quickly enter every magic book on my shelf with a barcode. That took about ten minutes. Mostly Karl Fulves and Bill Severn books. Imagine my surprise when new book arrives in the mail that same day, and it has a barcode! I excitedly scanned it in to discover... it's a fake barcode! Well, not fake, but it just scans the word INGENIOUS, which is rather USELESS, if not DEVIOUS!

What's Next

While I've got big plans for everthing this tool could do, I've got to be careful not to try to everything... poorly.

Focus on Collections

The primary experience for users is how they can manage and organize their own magic book library. While this is a free service, I still need to make a good "sales pitch" and being able to keep track of your magic library is a genuine problem for which many are seeking a solution.

• Add specific editions to your collection. (DONE)
• Add a note about the location. (DONE)
• Add a note about condition.
• Be able to add duplicate copies.
• Track the date it was acquired.
• Track the cost of aquisition. (to be able to value your collection)
• Search within your collected titles. (to find what you already own)

Streamline Data Entry

As I've been adding a lot of my own books, and logging contents, I've been keeping notes on what can be improved. Being that this is such a huge project, every second saved will add up over the years.

• Bulk entry of new contents. (DONE)
• Bulk editing of existing contents. (ie: to mark 12 things as a "trick" all at once)
• Switch OCR Table of Contents scanner (which works okay) to use an AI analysis and formatter (which works great!)

And add more tutorials to empower the crowd to get to work on adding and logging their own books.