v3.1.0

Added

• Guided book adding. Adding a book now starts with the ISBN: BookDB looks it up across your enabled sources and walks you through a short confirm step — pick the best value for each field, tidy up the authors, choose the collection — instead of dropping you straight into the full multi-tab editor. Manual entry is still one click away, and picks up the ISBN you already typed.
• Author type-ahead everywhere. When you type an author — adding a book, in the lookup review, or on the Contributors tab — BookDB suggests people already in your library and reuses them, matching either "First Last" or "Last, First" and ignoring case, so you stop accidentally creating duplicate authors.
• Getting started help. A new Help → Getting started topic introduces the basics for new users, in all nine languages.
• Guided empty state. An empty library now opens to a guided start screen (add your first book, import an existing catalog, or connect to a shared database) instead of a bare grid.
• Uncategorized filter. The collection sidebar has an Uncategorized entry that shows books not in any collection, so orphaned books are always findable — select it on its own to isolate them and bulk Move to collection.
• Richer statistics. The Statistics window is now charts backed by a tables view, adding library growth over time and top authors alongside the existing breakdowns.
• Weekly update check. BookDB quietly checks about once a week whether a newer version is available and shows a small indicator in the status bar; clicking it explains how to update for the way you installed it. It only reads the public release list — no telemetry, no account.
• Persistent cleanup dismissals. In the person data-cleanup panel, dismissing a suggested rename, split, or duplicate now sticks — it won't reappear on the next scan unless the underlying names change.
• Optional Google Books API key. You can add your own Google Books API key in Settings to move lookups onto your own quota. It's optional; BookDB works without one.

Changed

• Every book belongs to a collection. New books are always filed into a collection — the one you're viewing, or a sensible default — and the old "No collection" option is gone, so nothing silently ends up uncategorized. Any existing uncategorized books stay visible through the new Uncategorized filter.
• Live theme switching. Changing the colour theme in Settings now takes effect immediately, with no restart.
• Faster, clearer cataloguing. The lookup review opens right away instead of waiting on every source's cover to download: covers already fetched during the lookup appear at once, and the rest stream in with a loading indicator while the dialog is open. The status bar shows how many books are queued for review or have failed, and a failed lookup now says why — no results, rate-limited, offline, or all sources disabled — instead of a bare "failed". When a source is rate-limited or has no record, the review tells you, so you know some data may be worth a retry.

Fixed

• Deleting a book that had ever been loaned no longer fails; its loan history is removed with it, with a clear warning when the book is currently on loan.
• Checking a book in or out from the list now refreshes an open detail or edit view instead of leaving it showing stale loan status.
• A book action that fails (delete, import, move, and the like) now shows an error instead of silently doing nothing.