How this works

There are no rules to enforce and nobody to enforce them. This page is all the rules there are. 1

Two kinds of person

A curator keeps one box. They have the only kind of account in the system. They add donated books, fix the list when it drifts, and decide when something is gone. Nobody can edit their box and nobody reviews it.

A passerby is everybody else. No account, no name, no history. They can search every box, take any book, and mark things in and out. They are not registered, not tracked, and not accountable to anyone. 2

That is the complete list. There is no staff account, no moderator, no regional admin, and no support queue. If something needs a human it needs the curator, and the curator is a neighbor with a drill and some leftover paint.

Things that do not exist

• No late fees. Nothing to charge and no card on file.
• No due dates. Two weeks is a suggestion the curator sets and can turn off.
• No borrowing limit. Take six books if you want six books.
• No deposits. The books cost nothing and are worth nothing.
• No accounts for borrowers. Nothing to suspend, nothing to ban.
• No approval of listings. Whatever a curator types is what shows.
• No reporting a neighbor. There is nowhere for a report to go.

Each line on that list is a handful of screens that do not need designing. 3

What a curator is actually signing up for

Adding books when somebody drops a bag off. Glancing at the list every few weeks. Marking something gone when it has clearly gone. That is it. A box that nobody updates for three weeks is not breaking any rule, it just says so on its page. 4

The one thing that is a rule

A box's street address is collected to place the map pin and is never published. Neighbors see the block. A curator gets a first name and no contact method, because they volunteered a corner of their yard, not their inbox. 5

How registering works · How borrowing works · What states a book can be in · All the notes in one printable page