Nile | Devpost

Inspiration

We were inspired after hearing Wes, the Director of Sustainability at Amherst College, explain how high-quality used textbooks continue to be wasted, even though professors often request the same books semester after semester. What shocked us most was the cost: many textbooks exceed $300 per copy, meaning Amherst may be spending $600k+ per semester on books they already have.

So why aren’t these used textbooks being reused? Because the sustainability team has no visibility into professors' requests, and no system exists to match requests to existing inventory. Nile is our solution to close that loop.

What It Does

Nile is a textbook reuse and inventory management system built for colleges.

It includes:

A scanner app that allows the sustainability team to quickly categorize donated books as textbook, academic, or leisure using ISBN lookup.

A professor request portal where faculty can request books for their courses. The system automatically checks the scanned-book database, reserves available copies, and only places new orders for remaining quantities needed.

An admin dashboard where staff can approve, reject, or fulfill requests, allowing efficient reallocation of used textbooks.

How We Built It

Supabase for the backend, database, and Google authentication

Vercel for deploying the web app and handling HTTPS API requests from the scanner

React Vision Camera for fast, accurate ISBN barcode scanning

Google Books API to fetch book metadata

Shadcn UI to create a clean and functional professor/admin portal

Flow: The scanner app sends POST requests to Supabase to store book data. Supabase verifies ISBNs, fetches classification via Google Books API, and tracks all scanned books. Professors log in with Google authentication to submit textbook requests, and admins can approve or reject these requests through a Shadcn-refined interface.