Ausleihbar — open-source device lending for universities

Ausleihbar is an open-source web application for running a university's device-lending service: students and staff browse a catalogue of equipment (cameras, audio gear, laptops, rooms, …), check availability, reserve, pick up via QR code and return — while the lending desk and administrators manage inventory, bookings and the catalogue from the same system.

It is built and used at virtUOS, Universität Osnabrück and released as free software under the Apache License 2.0, so other institutions can run, adapt and contribute to it.

Replaces aging lending tools and email/paper workflows with a fast, mobile-first shop and a focused lending desk — calm, accessible, bilingual (German/English).

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Highlights

• 🛒 Borrower shop — browse by section/category, full-text search, availability calendar (per day or per hour), a cart that holds units while you book, reserve, and a personal "My bookings" view.
• 🏷️ QR pickup & return — hand out and take back devices by scanning the unit's QR code at the desk; printable QR labels in several sheet/label sizes.
• 🗓️ Lending desk — day overview, confirm pending reservations, walk-in lending, defect handling and re-booking, borrower history and statistics.
• 🧰 Flexible catalogue — product types with dynamic, schema-driven attributes; products, categories and sections with manual ordering; sets of items frequently lent together.
• 🌍 Bilingual content — every catalogue text is translatable (DE/EN), with an optional one-click machine-translation pre-fill via self-hostable LibreTranslate.
• 🔐 University SSO — login via OpenID Connect (Keycloak or your IdP); roles for borrowers, lenders (per pool) and admins; access groups and a configurable strike/blocking policy.
• 🔁 Data import/export — back up or move the whole catalogue (or a single pool) — structure, inventory and images — as a portable ZIP; plus a one-way importer for leihs inventory.
• 🐙 GitLab defect tickets (optional, per pool) — automatically open an issue when a device is marked defective.
• 🤖 Optional AI assist — connect a self-hostable, OpenAI-compatible LLM to suggest a product type's attributes and to pre-fill a product from an uploaded datasheet PDF; entirely opt-in and off by default.
• ♿ Accessible & themeable — keyboard- and screen-reader-friendly, light / dark / system appearance.

Screenshots

Availability & booking	Schema-driven product types

Lending desk	Usage statistics

Catalogue administration	Dark mode

…and fully responsive on the phone:

All images live in docs/screenshots/.

Tech stack

• Database: PostgreSQL 16
• Backend: Django 5 (Python 3.12) + Django REST Framework — apps accounts, catalog, lending, tenancy, common
• Frontend: React 18 + Vite + TypeScript + Tailwind CSS
• Auth: OpenID Connect via mozilla-django-oidc (Keycloak in local dev)
• Runtime: Docker Compose

Quick start (development)

# 1. Create your environment file
cp .env.example .env

# 2. Build and start all services
docker compose up --build

# 3. Apply database migrations (in a second terminal)
docker compose exec backend python manage.py migrate

# 4. (optional) Create a local admin user
docker compose exec backend python manage.py createsuperuser

Services:

• Frontend: http://localhost:5173
• Backend / Django admin: http://localhost:8000/admin/
• PostgreSQL: localhost:5432

If host port 8000 is already taken, set BACKEND_PORT (and a matching VITE_API_BASE_URL) in .env to publish the backend on another port.

For the full configuration reference (OIDC, email, content language, scheduled jobs) and a step-by-step production deployment guide, see docs/INSTALL.md.

Domain model

Catalogue models live in backend/catalog/models.py, the booking engine in backend/lending/models.py, users and roles in backend/accounts/models.py.

• ProductType — reusable template with a JSON attribute_schema (dynamic attributes carrying visible / required flags).
• Product — catalogue entry based on a ProductType; title, lending type (hours / days), min/max duration.
• Resource — one physical device in exactly one Product and one ResourcePool; status, inventory number, QR-code id.
• ResourcePool — a physical location with opening hours and pickup info.
• Category / Section — group products, and group categories (the "Sparten"), both with manual ordering.
• ProductSet — items frequently lent together.
• Booking / BookingItem — the reservation engine; a cart-status booking is the shopping cart holding units until checkout.

Documentation

• docs/INSTALL.md — install, configure and deploy.
• docs/concept.md — the full product concept (features, rules, workflows).
• docs/decisions/ — Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
• docs/data-transfer.md — the data import/export round-trip.
• docs/leihs-import.md — importing inventory from leihs.
• docs/roadmap.md — what's planned.
• PRODUCT.md & DESIGN.md — product strategy and the visual/UX contract.
• CLAUDE.md — orientation for working in the codebase.

Contact

Developed and maintained by virtUOS — Universität Osnabrück (https://www.virtuos.uni-osnabrueck.de/).

Contact / maintainer: Rüdiger Rolf · rrolf@uni-osnabrueck.de

Questions, ideas and contributions are welcome — please open an issue or pull request in this project.

License

Ausleihbar is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE and NOTICE. Third-party dependencies and their licenses are listed in THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md; authors and copyright are recorded in AUTHORS.md.

Copyright 2026 Universität Osnabrück (virtUOS).