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Jelu

Every time a commercial book-tracking platform changes its terms or shuts down, years of reading notes and carefully curated wishlists risk getting lost in messy spreadsheet migrations; Jelu puts your entire reading life under your own control as a self-hosted personal Goodreads alternative. Readers log books as currently reading, finished, or dropped, track page progress and dated reading events, and organize titles across unlimited custom shelves using flexible tags. Adding new books takes seconds through mobile camera ISBN barcode scanning, EPUB and OPF metadata extraction, or automated online searches that query Calibre metadata plugins and fallback book providers for covers, summaries, and publisher identifiers. Migrating existing libraries is effortless with bulk imports for Goodreads CSV exports and plain-text ISBN lists alongside one-click CSV data exports. Author pages automatically pull biographies from Wikipedia and include a deduplication tool to merge duplicate author records created during bulk imports. Household and book-club members can sign in via local accounts, LDAP, or reverse-proxy authentication to share book ratings, write public or instance-wide reviews, inspect yearly and monthly reading statistics, and generate HTML or Markdown embed snippets for personal blogs and digital journals. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.

Jelu
Jelu
Jelu
Jelu
Jelu
Jelu

Benefits

  • Complete Ownership of Reading History
  • Store all reading events, custom shelves, ratings, and book reviews in a single-file SQLite database supporting Write-Ahead Logging (WAL) mode, one-click CSV exports, and full REST API access.
  • Automated Multi-Source Book Metadata
  • Populate book covers, descriptions, ISBNs, and third-party links automatically using embedded Calibre fetch-ebook-metadata tools, OpenLibrary fallback providers, EPUB and OPF file parsers, and Wikipedia author biography imports.
  • Frictionless Goodreads and Barcode Onboarding
  • Migrate years of reading history in minutes using native Goodreads CSV and ISBN batch importers, or add physical books on the spot using the mobile web camera barcode scanner.
  • Multi-User Reviews and Blog Embeds
  • Support family or book-club instances with LDAP and proxy authentication, shared community book reviews, yearly reading statistics charts, and copy-paste HTML or Markdown widgets for external blogs.

Features

  • Calibre and OpenLibrary Metadata
  • Queries Calibre fetch-ebook-metadata plugins and configurable fallback providers like OpenLibrary and Google Books to auto-populate book covers, summaries, and ISBN identifiers.
  • Goodreads CSV and EPUB Import
  • Imports historical reading logs from Goodreads CSV exports, plain-text ISBN lists, and local EPUB or OPF ebook files while exporting library data to CSV.
  • Mobile Camera ISBN Scanner
  • Uses the browser media stream API on mobile devices to scan physical book ISBN barcodes and pre-fill metadata forms prior to library insertion.
  • Wikipedia Author Auto-Merge
  • Fetches author biographies and portraits directly from Wikipedia and provides a built-in merging workflow to consolidate duplicate author entries across the catalog.
  • Multi-User LDAP and Reviews
  • Supports multiple user accounts via internal credentials, LDAP directory binding, or HTTP proxy headers, enabling shared ratings, user reviews, and cross-library browsing.
  • Yearly Reading Stats and API
  • Visualizes annual and monthly reading totals, page counts, and completion ratios while exposing a documented REST API and embeddable HTML/Markdown book snippets.

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