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The main screen showing your current e-book collection and some metadata for each book.
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The custom e-reader used for reading each e-book. It contains a progress bar, zoom in/out functions, and selectable text areas.
Inspiration
We both love reading and find e-books to be much more convenient than traditional books. We were inspired by existing e-book solutions, such as the Kindle and smartphones, and wanted to design an e-book reader that was more accessible for PCs and laptops.
What it does
Librari scans your existing collection of e-books, automatically gathers information such as Title, Author, Year, and Page No., and allows you to read them in a custom e-reader. It also updates a progress bar while you read and lets you zoom in or out of the page.
How we built it
Our design process began by creating a few protoypes in Figma. We then used Java with the JavaFX and GSON libraries to create the program. We also used the OpenLibrary RESTful API to gather book information, and handled the build process using Maven.
Challenges we ran into
It was inconvenient to find and parse real .epub ebooks, so we had to use .txt files instead. Also, the OpenLibrary API was inconsistent in providing cover images for some books, so we had to leave those out of the UI for a consistent design. Finally, it was difficult to make a sleek and modern-looking UI using JavaFX with the limited time we had.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The UI is user-friendly, relatively responsive, and can load the contents of most books in under a second. We also used caching to limit the amount of API calls to one set of calls per program execution. We are also simply proud of finishing the project and getting it to a useable state before the deadline.
What we learned
We gained a lot of experience using JavaFX and have grown much more comfortable with the library. We also learned how to effectively cooperate under a stressful time limit. Furthermore, we feel a lot more comfortable making RESTful API requests and parsing the resulting data, which is something we were not as experienced with prior to the hackathon.
What's next for librari
We are looking forward to potentially developing librari or similar projects further using the skills that we gained. With further time and effort, we should be able to improve the UI and add support for additional e-book formats such as .epub and .pdf.
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