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Export & Backup

Jinbocho gives you two separate tools, for two different jobs:

Tool Where What it's for
Export books (CSV/JSON) Settings → Export books, or the export menu on the Books page A lightweight, books-only list for spreadsheets or quick analysis. Not a restore format.
Backup & restore Settings → Backup & restore A complete, restorable snapshot of your whole library — locations, books, loans, reading history and the member roster. Use it to move to a new database without losing anything.
Goodreads import Settings → Library data Bring in an existing Goodreads export as a starting point, instead of adding books one by one.

This page covers both, plus how to restore from a backup.

Exporting Your Library (CSV/JSON)

Jinbocho supports two lightweight export formats:

Format Best for
CSV Spreadsheets, Excel, Google Sheets, plain text editing
JSON Scripting, technical users, quick structured exports

How to Export

  1. Open Settings (gear icon in the sidebar)
  2. Under Export books (CSV/JSON), choose your format: CSV or JSON
  3. Click the download button — your browser saves the file immediately

The export button is also available directly on the Books page via the export menu in the top-right corner.

Not a restore format

This export only contains your owned books and where they're shelved. It does not include loans, per-member reading history, or the member roster, and there is no matching "import CSV" feature. For anything you might need to restore later, use Backup & restore below instead.

CSV Export

The exported CSV has one row per owned book copy.

CSV columns

Column Description Example
id Internal ID of the owned copy c3f1a2b4
isbn ISBN-13 of the bibliographic record 9788845292613
title Book title Il deserto dei Tartari
author Author(s), comma-separated Dino Buzzati
publisher Publisher name Mondadori
published_date Publication year or date 1940
language Language code it
page_count Number of pages 256
room Room name Living Room
bookcase Bookcase name IKEA Billy
section Section name (if any) Left column
shelf Shelf name Shelf 2
position Position number on shelf 3
reading_status Current status finished
added_at When the copy was added (ISO 8601) 2026-01-15T18:30:00Z

Example CSV

id,isbn,title,author,publisher,published_date,language,page_count,room,bookcase,section,shelf,position,reading_status,added_at
c3f1a2b4,9788845292613,Il deserto dei Tartari,Dino Buzzati,Mondadori,1940,it,256,Living Room,IKEA Billy,Left column,Shelf 2,3,finished,2026-01-15T18:30:00Z
a7e9c123,9780261103573,The Fellowship of the Ring,J.R.R. Tolkien,HarperCollins,1954,en,432,Study,Corner shelf,,Shelf 1,1,want_to_read,2026-02-03T10:00:00Z

Open in Excel or Google Sheets

The CSV uses UTF-8 encoding and comma separators. If special characters (accents, non-Latin scripts) appear broken in Excel, import it by specifying UTF-8 encoding: Data → From Text/CSV → File origin: 65001 Unicode (UTF-8).

JSON Export

The JSON export is a full structured backup, preserving all data including nested location objects.

JSON structure

{
  "exported_at": "2026-06-11T20:00:00Z",
  "library_id": "lib_abc123",
  "books": [
    {
      "id": "c3f1a2b4",
      "bibliographic_record": {
        "isbn": "9788845292613",
        "title": "Il deserto dei Tartari",
        "author": "Dino Buzzati",
        "publisher": "Mondadori",
        "published_date": "1940",
        "language": "it",
        "page_count": 256,
        "description": "..."
      },
      "location": {
        "room": "Living Room",
        "bookcase": "IKEA Billy",
        "section": "Left column",
        "shelf": "Shelf 2",
        "position": 3
      },
      "reading_status": "finished",
      "added_at": "2026-01-15T18:30:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

Backup & Restore

For a complete, restorable backup of your whole library, use Backup & restore in Settings — not the CSV/JSON book export above.

What's included

A full backup contains everything:

  • The library and its member roster (names, emails, roles)
  • Rooms, bookcases, sections and shelves
  • Every owned book and its bibliographic record
  • Loans (active and past)
  • Per-member reading history ("reads")

How to back up

  1. Open Settings (gear icon in the sidebar)
  2. Under Backup & restore, click Download full backup
  3. Your browser downloads a single JSON file (jinbocho-backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json)

Recommended backup schedule: once a month, download a full backup and keep it in a cloud storage folder (Google Drive, Dropbox, iCloud).

How to restore

  1. Open Settings → Backup & restore
  2. Click Restore from backup and select a previously downloaded backup file
  3. Review the confirmation dialog: it shows the library name, when the backup was exported, and counts of members, rooms, books and loans it contains
  4. Click Restore to confirm

Restoring merges, it doesn't overwrite

Restoring a backup merges it into your current library rather than replacing it: rooms, bookcases, books and members already present are recognized and reused, so nothing gets duplicated — even if you restore the same file twice. This also makes it safe to use a backup to migrate your library to a new Jinbocho instance.

If a member was removed after the backup was taken but is still referenced in it (e.g. they used to own or read a book), restoring recreates them with their original name and email so that history isn't lost.

If the restore fails partway through, Jinbocho tells you which step failed (member roster or library data) so you know whether it's safe to simply try again.

For adding individual books instead of restoring a backup, see:

Importing from Goodreads

If you're moving from Goodreads, you don't have to re-enter your list by hand.

  1. In Goodreads, export your library (My Books → Import/Export → Export Library) to get a CSV file
  2. In Jinbocho, open Settings → Library data (Admin or Editor only)
  3. Click Import from Goodreads and upload the CSV
  4. Review the results — Jinbocho looks up each ISBN and adds a bibliographic record and an owned copy for every match
  5. Assign locations afterwards, since Goodreads exports don't know about your rooms and shelves

Matching is best-effort

Books without a usable ISBN in the Goodreads export, or that Open Library and Google Books don't recognise, won't be imported automatically — add those manually afterwards.

Reading Status Values

When reviewing exports, these are the valid reading_status values:

Value Meaning
want_to_read In your to-read pile
reading Currently reading
finished Completed