Currently existing file libraries do a great job of archiving and storing important files, but they frequently have some limitations or problems that have not really been addressed. This blog post will outline the biggest issues that we have noticed and how files.fm Library is looking to solve them.

Issue 1: Where to Store Files That Are Only Somewhat Useful

Let’s imagine a PhD student — they must have written hundreds of essays, papers and study notes. But all these materials are probably just stored on their computer — possibly because these files don’t seem quite important enough to upload to existing digital libraries. I mean, they are just quick essays that were written in one night or study notes that were quickly jotted down in lectures. However, there are numerous students who are studying that topic and who could really use additional notes. Maybe they dozed off for just a second and missed an important part of the lecture or maybe they just didn’t understand some part of it as thouroughly as they want. Another student’s study notes could help them understand what they missed far better than digging through hundreds of pages of study books. Files.fm Library is crowdsourced and this is one of those things that we are looking to fix. Anyone can upload any file that they think might be useful to someone. We don’t accept only published and reviewed materials — if you think someone might find your files useful, you can just upload them and if the community decides that they are helpful you will receive a reward for sharing these files.

Issue 2: 404 Not Found

Another aspect that we are trying to fix is the fleeting lifespans of many files. It is a quite frequent situation — you need to find some information and you find the perfect file that would answer all your questions. You click the link and boom — 404 not found. Files frequently get deleted or moved and for files that are not very popular this often means that they are lost forever. This is why files.fm Library will use a hybrid-decentralized network — the files will be available both from centralized servers and P2P networks. Because of this the file will still be available even if there are no seeders or the servers go down.

Issue 3: I Know What I Need, I Just Can’t Find It.

Do you know someone who enjoys participating in running competitions? Not necessarily at a professional level, maybe they just enjoy challenging themselves once in a while. After such events you might wish to find pictures with them, so you find the published photo album and discover that there were a thousand runners, five thousand pictures and you start to get vertigo when trying to scroll through all those thumbnails. On the other hand, files.fm Library will use AI content recognition, so you could find your friend’s picture by just searching for their name or bib number.

Issue 4: Tens of Different Services and I Still Can’t Find the Thing I Need

One day you wake up and from the moment you open your eyes there’s an earworm in your head. It doesn’t matter if you like the song or not — after a couple of hours even the most beautiful and heavenly tune will drive you mad. So you decide to try out the time-tested method of listening to the song to get it out of your head. You open Spotify — 0 search results. You go to Youtube — This video is unavailable in your country. You try Apple Music — Item not available. You go through several other sites until finally you give up and accept that this song is now just a part of you and you might as well accept that it will play your whole life. Half an hour later the song is forgotten, but that doesn’t change the fact that you would have felt better if you had just found that song on your first try. This is because all of these services are segmented and only provide access to some of the files. Our main ambition is that files.fm Library will one day be a one stop shop for all file search needs — whether they be documents, pictures, audio or video files.

So these are a couple of the main problems that we will attempt to solve by creating the files.fm Library. If you too have experienced these issues, find us on social media and let’s commiserate together:

Website: https://library.files.fm/

Telegram: https://t.me/filesfm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Filesfm/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/files_fm

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/filesfm/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/files.fm/