The service
LibLantern is a free, community-run tool that lets you photograph bookshelves and instantly identify the books on them using AI. We use Google Gemini AI to read the photos and the Google Books API to fetch book details like cover art, descriptions, and ratings.
LibLantern is an unincorporated community project. We provide the service as-is, with no uptime guarantees. We do our best to keep it running, but we can't promise the service will always be available or error-free. See the Limitation of Liability section for more.
LibLantern is currently free with no paid plans. We reserve the right to introduce optional paid features in the future, but we'll give users fair notice before any changes that affect free access.
Your account
To use LibLantern, you create an account with an email address. Account authentication is handled by Auth0. You're responsible for keeping your account secure — don't share your login credentials with others.
You must be old enough in your jurisdiction to consent to the collection of your data (typically 13 in the US, 16 in parts of Europe). If you're not sure, check with a parent or guardian before signing up.
We may suspend or remove accounts that violate these terms. If that happens, we'll try to let you know why.
To delete your account, email hello@liblantern.com with the subject "Delete my account." We'll remove your account and associated data.
Acceptable use
LibLantern is designed for discovering and identifying books. Please use it for that. Specifically:
- Only upload photos of books. Don't upload photos that contain explicit, illegal, hateful, or otherwise inappropriate content.
- Respect others' privacy. When photographing books in public spaces, be mindful of bystanders. Avoid uploading photos that clearly identify individuals who haven't consented to being photographed.
- Don't abuse the service. Don't use LibLantern in ways that could harm it or other users — for example, don't attempt to overload our servers, scrape data at scale, or probe for security vulnerabilities.
- Don't use it for spam or commercial scraping. LibLantern is a community tool, not a bulk data harvesting service.
- Follow the law. Use LibLantern in compliance with applicable laws in your jurisdiction.
We reserve the right to remove content or accounts that violate these guidelines.
Intellectual property
The app belongs to LibLantern. The LibLantern application, design, code, and branding are owned by the LibLantern project. You may not copy, redistribute, or build competing products using our materials without permission.
Your photos belong to you. You retain ownership of any photos you upload to LibLantern. By uploading photos, you grant LibLantern a limited license to store them, send them to our AI provider for book identification, and display your scan history back to you. We don't claim ownership of your photos, and we don't use them for any purpose beyond operating the service.
Book covers, titles, author names, and descriptions retrieved from the Google Books API belong to their respective copyright holders. LibLantern displays this information for informational purposes.
Limitation of liability
LibLantern is provided "as is" without any warranty, express or implied. We don't guarantee that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that book identifications will always be accurate — AI makes mistakes.
To the maximum extent permitted by law, LibLantern and its contributors will not be liable for any damages arising from your use of the service, including but not limited to: loss of data, interruption of service, inaccurate book identifications, or any other losses.
Because LibLantern is free and community-run, this limitation is essential to keeping it available. If you need a service with guaranteed uptime or accuracy, LibLantern may not be the right fit.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms from time to time. When we do, we'll update the effective date at the top of this page. For significant changes, we'll make a reasonable effort to notify you — for example, by posting a notice in the app.
Continuing to use LibLantern after we update the terms means you accept the new version. If you disagree with a change, you can stop using the service and delete your account.
Contact
Have a question about these terms, or something else on your mind? We're happy to hear from you.
Email: hello@liblantern.com
LibLantern is an unincorporated community project, not a registered company.