This project was something I wanted for my own personal use. I primarily read non-fiction and have a habit of highlighting certain snippets that stand out to me for later reference. After a while though, I realized that I rarely revisited these ideas and my effort was in vain. The issue was that these snippets were not easy to find across an entire bookshelf.
I could have typed out each snippet into a Word document after finishing a book, but this didn't preserve the original context. Often, I'll highlight a portion of a sentence - sometimes even a single word - that requires some of the surrounding text to make sense.
I thought I might find an existing tool for this job, but my search turned up no results. If I wanted something like this I'd have to build it myself - so that's exactly what I did.