Lending and borrowing books is common amongst groups of people who share similar interests. In such a community there is a fairly high chance that if you need to borrow a particular book, then another member will have a copy. The difficulty is finding out which member of the community has it, without having to bother all of them with the question. The Bookshelf Project was originally conceived to solve this problem for staff working at the Knowledge Media Institute at The Open University in the UK.