Back in April we added ownership statuses, including Lent, so you could keep a list of everything out in the wild. It answered "which of my books are out?" but not "who has it?" or "since when?", which are usually the questions that matter when a paperback has been gone for a year. This update answers those too.
Open a book and press Lend (on a phone, it's in the book's menu). Say who has it and, if you like, when you'd like it back. From then on the book shows who has it until you mark it returned.
You can also note how to reach the borrower, which helps when it's been eight months and you've forgotten which friend of a friend it was.
Overdue books are flagged. If a book is past its due date, it's marked as overdue.
An Out On Loan panel for your home page. Turn it on under Dashboard, then Preferences, then Home Widgets, and your home page lists everything currently out and when it's due back. It's off by default, since not everyone lends books.
Marking it returned. When the book comes home, press Mark returned. If you pressed it by mistake, you can undo it.
If you own more than one copy of a book (a reading copy and a nice edition, say), you can lend each one separately. The book card tells you how many are out. A book is marked "Lent" once every copy is out, and goes back to "Owned" as soon as one comes home.
A Lending section on the book's page keeps the full history: who had it, when, how to reach them, and whether it came back late. You can correct or delete any loan, so a typo in a name or the wrong date isn't stuck there for ever.
A few sensible rules:
Because a book is now marked Lent by lending it, "Lent" is no longer something you pick by hand on the edit page or as your default ownership for new books. If you marked books as Lent yourself before this update, they keep that status until you change it. Nothing has been switched over behind your back.
If you share reviews on a public profile, they now have a proper home. There's a new Reviews tab that shows every review you've shared, newest first, each with its book and your rating (if you share ratings).
Until now a visitor could only see your latest few, and older reviews could only be found by opening each book in turn. If you've written a lot of reviews, that meant most of them were effectively hidden.
Reviews marked as containing spoilers stay hidden until a visitor chooses to read them. Your profile's header now counts your reviews alongside your books and lists, and each count takes you straight to its tab.
As always, only reviews on books you've made public appear. Nothing about this update makes anything public that wasn't already.
