Library Shelf

Library shelves for books and movies. Entries live as rows in a ledger note with an optional note attached

The ledger

Any note with a fenced json or yaml block shaped { library: [ … ] }. The rest of the note is left alone, so a ledger can carry prose and render its own shelf.

```yaml
library:
  - title: Hiroshima Diary
    author: Michihiko Hachiya
    shelf: Non-Fiction
    isbn: "9780807845479"
    status: active
  - title: Arrival
    director: Denis Villeneuve
    year: 2016
    shelf: Sci-Fi
    status: done
    rating: 5
    finished: [2024-08-19, 2026-01-04]
```

Only title is required, it will sort with any category.

Fields

Adding entries

Command palette → Add to library. Pick a ledger, search, click a result; the entry is appended to the ledger's data block in whatever format that block already uses. "Don't look up" adds a bare title.

Books search Open Library. No API key. Films search TMDB. Needs a free key in settings.

1. Make a Books and Movies note, seed with:

```library-shelf
group: shelf
total: books
stats: true
```

```yaml
library:
  - title: Everything Is F*cked
    author: Mark Manson
    shelf: Non-Fiction
    isbn: "9780062888433"
    status: done
    rating: 3.5
  - title: Miss Sunflower
    author: Sugano Manami
    shelf: Fiction
    isbn: "4840137390"
    status: wishlist
```

The Movies note is the same with total: movies. Drop total and stats and the grid still renders, but you lose the count and the clickable status breakdown above it.

2. Make Library hub note and seed with:

## Now

```library-shelf
from: [Library/Books, Library/Movies]
where:
  status: active
size: 96
empty: Nothing on the go.
```

3. Lookup and append. Command palette → Add to library. Ledger Library/Books.md, status wishlist, search your book.

• you get the entry instead of a second row — with its status, rating and sitting count — and three choices: record another sitting (appends today to finished), change its status, or add it as a separate entry anyway.

Giving media its own note

Command palette → Create note for a library entry.

• Pick a ledger, click a title: it makes the note, drops a library-card block in it and writes note: inot ledger row. Entries that already have a note aren't listed.

By hand: create the note, add note: <path> to the corresponding ledger entry, and add the block below to the start of the note:

A library-card block renders the entry at the top of its own note:

```library-card
```

Library Hub View

A hub is one note of library-shelf blocks reading across every ledger, each under its own heading. The whole thing, in one paste:

## Now

```library-shelf
from: [Library/Books, Library/Movies]
where:
  status: active
size: 96
empty: Nothing on the go.
```

## Recently finished

```library-shelf
from: [Library/Books, Library/Movies]
where:
  status: done
sort: -finished
limit: 12
size: 96
```

## Everything

```library-shelf
from: [Library/Books, Library/Movies]
group: medium
size: 88
```

## Wishlist

```library-shelf
from: [Library/Books, Library/Movies]
where:
  status: wishlist
size: 88
```

## Abandoned

```library-shelf
from: [Library/Books, Library/Movies]
where:
  status: abandoned
layout: table
columns: [cover, title, author, year]
empty: Nothing abandoned. Suspicious.
```

With no from, the block reads the note it's in.

Which entries to show

How to arrange them

How it looks

• active gets an accent outline

• wishlist dims until hover

• abandoned desaturates. Editing a ledger repaints every open shelf that reads it.

• total counts everything where matched, before limit trims the display — a number that shrinks when you cap the grid isn't a total.

• Group headers fold. Click one to collapse its shelf.

Appearance

Four CSS variables are the tuning knobs, settable on .lib-shelf in a snippet:

Covers

An explicit cover always wins. Otherwise, with Derive covers enabled:

• isbn → Open Library. Free, no key, but coverage is patchy — it misses a lot of manga and older printings.
• asin → Amazon's image CDN. Unofficial, but it resolves.

Anything that fails to load falls back to a titled card in the theme's accent colour. Misses are common enough that this is a normal state, not an error.

Settings

Ledger folder · notes folder · default layout · cover width · derive covers · TMDB API key.

Logic checks without Obsidian

main.js requires obsidian at load, so testing outside the app means stubbing it. The parser, query layer, cover resolution and append round-trip are all covered that way, with recorded output.

Licence

MIT.