Project progress

Overall progress

Current estimate: approximately 68%.

This estimate is qualitative and deliberately cautious. It does not measure what is built in the code (where the technical mapping is very advanced), but what is usable from A to Z by a library that would not have the project's designer at hand. It is a political framing, not a software effort indicator: there is still work to make the application truly robust, intuitive, and reliable in all its modules.

Recent trajectory:

• 2024 — approximately 30%, first prototype carried by one pilot library;
• early 2026 — approximately 50%, expanded prototype but still fragile in its use;
• April 2026 — approximately 60%, exit from prototype, first stable building blocks on the reader and circulation side;
• early May 2026 — approximately 65%, email notifications overhaul entered effective and multilingual execution, login by identifier in addition to email, inclusive language charter, reader manual published in eight languages;
• mid-May 2026 — approximately 68%, delivery of the network administration model (cooptation, collective removal, traced cross-library intervention rights), end-to-end journey for new library applications closed, opening of the on-site consultation workstream on the backend side, institutional site expanded to eight languages, administrator manual published.

The project is usable on a daily basis in the pilot libraries (Brazil and France). It is being hardened to become reliable outside its context of origin — which will still take time. It is neither a prototype nor a finished product: it is a production system meant to generalise, and whose generalisation is in progress.

What works today

These features run in production in pilot libraries, with real readers. They are not therefore frozen: their hardening continues as they are put to the test.

Public catalogue. Search, book records, author records, library-contextualised records. Wishlists. Continuous navigation between catalogue, book, and author.

Reader accounts. Account creation, login by email or short identifier, forgotten password, profile modification, password change directly from the account. Account status banner (active, attention, restricted). Personal public identifiers. Account deletion by the reader themselves, without mediation.

Circulation. Reservations, current loans, renewals, full and partial returns, history. Overdue management. Locally configurable circulation rules, modifiable from the interface without touching the code.

Librarian dashboard. Automatic daily work (planned pickups, reservations to handle, overdues, expected returns). Batch reservation management. Direct loan creation. Full and partial returns. Reader management with restriction and lifting of restriction. Circulation statistics per library.

Email notifications in the recipient's language. For the main flows (reservations, loans, profile, team governance), emails are sent in the reader's preferred language. Libraries can enable or disable each notification family independently.

Multilingualism. Eight active languages in the application — Brazilian Portuguese (reference language), French, Castilian, Italian, German, English, Catalan and Esperanto. Eight languages in the institutional site too. Selector on each page, without flags or country codes. Author biographies translatable independently.

Local visual identity. Each library has its colours, fonts, background images, welcome message — without touching the code, through configuration.

New library application to the network. A collective wishing to join can create an account on the application, submit an institutional application via an online form, receive an acknowledgement email in their language, and trigger an immediate notification to the network coordination. The journey works in eight languages, with human support from the network sponsoring libraries.

Network administration. The political model for network coordination is now inscribed in the tool: cooptation by unanimous consent, collective removal by unanimous consent with grace period, self-removal always possible, cross-library intervention rights on a local library traced in an immutable log readable by the concerned coordinations. The engine is in place; the corresponding management screen is coming (see below).

Account security. Anti-bruteforce protection at login. Automatic logout on browser close. Provisional password imposed at first access, to be changed immediately. Immutable audit of cross-library actions.

What is being consolidated

This is where most of the current work concentrates. These workstreams function partially, or with assumed limits. They are usable, but not yet robust enough to be deployable without human accompaniment.

Advanced cataloguing module. Detailed records by material type (books, brochures, periodicals, flyers, audio, audiovisual, digital resources, dossiers, zines, archives). Simple and complete modes. Metadata search by ISBN and in the National Library of Brazil. Drafts and publication. Indexing and label printing. The core works; some branches (provenance, enriched authorities, native documentary cooperation) are being reworked. This is probably the workstream that needs the most hardening before being reliable outside the pilot libraries.

Library configuration. Identity, communications, rulebook (PDF), team, operating modes. Stable on the essentials; some sections (inter-library exchanges, inter-library loans) remain in the deployment phase.

On-site consultations. Requesting to consult a document without borrowing it, proposing a time slot, confirming or refusing the slot, welcoming the consultation, marking a missed consultation. The backend engine is delivered, with its safeguards (impossible to have simultaneously a loan and a consultation on the same document). The screens on the reader and library sides, as well as the notifications dedicated to this flow, are arriving in the coming weeks.

Email notifications — extensions. The main flows have moved to multilingual. Work continues to cover the secondary flows (reports, network events, membership renewal reminders) and to make the system fully independent from the historical legacy of one pilot library.

Digital resources. Integrated reader for restricted PDFs. External links. Access metadata. Coherent with a policy of clearly defined access modes (public PDF, restricted PDF, external link). The scope expands progressively.

Hardening of the data access layer. The backend relies on a large number of functions and views with high privileges, some of which must be rewritten or partitioned to reduce the exposure surface. This work is ongoing, without operational urgency in the context of the pilot libraries, but necessary before broadening.

Membership fees. The engine is in place and works in the Brazilian pilot library. Activation for other libraries, and automatic expiration notifications, remain to be tested and then deployed.

What is in preparation

These workstreams exist as design, sometimes as prototype, but are not yet usable on a daily basis. Their opening will be gradual.

Network administration interface. The political governance model of the network is inscribed in the engine, as indicated above. The corresponding screen — which will allow proposing a cooptation, voting, following ongoing proposals, consulting the log of cross-library actions — is the next major workstream. As long as it does not exist, these actions go through direct solicitation of the coordination.

Welcoming wizard for a new library. Today, once an application is validated, the coordinator arrives directly on an interface populated with dozens of technical parameters. A guided journey is in design, which will group these choices into thematically coherent steps, with reasonable anarchist default values, and which will produce as output a skeleton of internal rules immediately usable. This workstream is planned for the second half of 2026.

Imports from partners. Capacity to import records and collections from other libertarian libraries, archives, publishers. A partner probing layer exists (HTML, OAI, SRU, JSON-RPC, OpenAPI detection), but productive large-scale imports are deferred until the cataloguing module stabilises.

Complete inter-library loans. Preparation and tracking of temporary loans between libraries of the network. Definitive exchanges of surplus documents. Already partially modelled on the backend side, not yet exposed in stable interface.

Authorities Workshop. The project's fourth circle, which will open collaboration to comrades not affiliated with any library, is today an announcement of intent. The technical module will be developed after the cataloguing module stabilises.

What does not exist, and is not in the near priorities

To manage expectations: here is what AnarBib does not do, and will not do in the near horizon.

No dedicated native mobile application. The web interface is responsive and works well on mobile. But there is no packaged iOS or Android application, and there is no plan to make one — it is a disproportionate maintenance cost for the actual need.

No commercial SaaS. AnarBib is free software that libraries use. It is not a service with subscription, billing, paid support. The network helps each other; there is no company behind it.

No automatic billing of fines. Overdues are signalled. Regularisations go through dialogue between the library and the reader. No automation of fine or penalty calculation.

No integration with proprietary ILSs. AnarBib does not dialogue with PMB, BiblioCommons, Symphony, Ex Libris, or other commercial tools. Imports/exports go through open formats (JSON, MARC, OAI-PMH eventually), not through proprietary connectors.

No analytics or algorithmic recommendation features. No statistical tracking of reader behaviour. No "people who borrowed this book also liked" engine. The project politically refuses these logics.

Indicative calendar

This calendar is deliberately vague. Militant free software projects have temporalities that are not those of a commercial publisher with quarterly roadmap. The current sustained pace of development is made possible by the absence of third-party users to whom we owe real-time accountability — this is a temporary window that will close as the network expands.

End of 2026: delivery of the network administration interface, closure of the on-site consultation workstream (screens and notifications), hardening of the cataloguing module, email notifications overhaul carried to its term, withdrawal of historical residues, welcoming wizard for a new library.

Through 2027: gradual opening of productive imports from partners, prototype of complete inter-library loans, concrete opening of the Authorities Workshop.

2027 and beyond: federative extensions, industrialised public instance request, opening to candidate libraries beyond the pilot circle.

These windows are not promises. They are intentions, subject to the availability of comrades and to the contingencies of reality.

How to stay informed

Matrix room — to discuss live, follow announcements, ask questions: #anarbib:matrix.org

Codeberg repository — to follow the evolution of the code, see open issues, milestones: codeberg.org/anarbib

Coordination mail — for more formal questions or solicitations: contato@anarbib.org

This page itself is updated at each major milestone, and at minimum every three months. If you come back and the update date is older than that, do not hesitate to signal it.