Run a lending library for your club

Your makerspace, club, school or office lends things out: drills, cameras, projectors, a tent. The list lives in someone’s head, and nobody knows who has the good extension lead. In this recipe you start a lending library from a ready-made database, hand the day-to-day lending to the agent, and share the library with the volunteers who run the desk.

What you need

• XataWorks, open, with the agent answering. If it is not yet, Getting started covers the one decision to make first.
• A list of what you lend, in a spreadsheet or just typed into the chat.
• To share the library with volunteers: XataWorks Pro. To draft reminders: a mail account in XataWorks.

1. Start from the Equipment Checkout template

Choose File ▸ New ▸ Database, pick Equipment Checkout, untick Include sample records, type a name such as Tool_Library and choose Create. The database arrives with Items, People and Loans. Each loan knows its item and borrower, and whether it is overdue. A Check in button closes a loan.

2. Fill it, and make it yours

Attach your list and ask the agent to add each item, with its category and where it lives. Then ask for what your library needs that the template doesn’t have:

Add a Condition field to Items with the choices Good, Worn and Needs repair, and put it on the item form.

The first change asks. Answer Allow changes to “Tool_Library” in this chat and the agent carries on without asking again.

3. Lend and take back by asking

At the desk, say what happened:

Lend the cordless drill to Priya Shah until Friday. She’s new: her email is priya@example.com.

The agent adds Priya as a person and records the loan. When the drill comes back, press Check in on the loan, or tell the agent. And when the question is “have we got one?”:

Is the tile saw in? What’s overdue, and who has it?

4. Draft the reminders

With Mail open in the same chat (View ▸ Mail ▸ All Mail), ask the agent to draft a polite reminder to each person with an overdue item, naming the item and the day it was due. It opens a filled-in message for each one and stops. You read them and press Send yourself. Mail asks before each step the agent takes in it.

5. Share it with the volunteers

Open the database’s own page from the list, and under Sharing press Sharing…. Add each volunteer by email at Can edit, so they can lend and check in from their own phone or computer. Use Can view for anyone who only needs to see what’s in.

Where this recipe stops

• Reminders are drafts. No agent can send mail. Every reminder goes out when you press Send.
• The library runs from one computer. Volunteers reach it while that computer is on, with XataWorks running. A library shared from a computer that stays on is there whenever the desk is open.
• Deleting asks. Removing an item, a person or a loan always asks, and a snapshot is taken first.

Read more

• Databases: the templates, fields and value lists, and the database’s own page.
• Mail: what the agent may and may not do with your mail.