My hard disk e-book files are a mess (so it is a lot like my mind) and it is hard to keep track of what I have and where I have it. There are versions of books in multiple formats – some still in PDB from the days of Palm, some in MOBI which was an upgrade in readability and usage for the Palm, tons in PDF from work and on-screen viewing, HTML files galore, more in TXT and DOC, newer stuff in RTF for the Reader, a smattering from morebooks.net in LRF, and some protected BBeB stuff from CONNECT. There are also some LIT, CHM, and RB formats floating around.

Some are in states of conversion from one format to another to get to RTF for the Reader and many more in the format I found them in. Some are even in ZIP or RAR compressed format. Now I have a lot of tools from Amber ABC for conversion so that is not the problem. The problem is keeping everything straight.

Is there a good indexing / inventory / cataloging program out there that will allow me to work on these files that is any better than Windows Explorer?

If you find one, let me know cause I have the same problem. I have a lot sorted by aurthor and a lot sorted by genre. I also collect a lot of articles and policy papers and those are a mess, not to mention all the different file formats.

Is there a good indexing / inventory / cataloging program out there that will allow me to work on these files that is any better than Windows Explorer?


Personally I use Google desktop which is very fast in finding stuff on your pc, and you can search exactly as in regular Google, beats Windows Explorer by a lot. There is free book catalogue software around (I tried one but forgot its name), but I did not find it useful.

http://desktop.google.com/?utm_source=en-et-more&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=en

I think the challenge in creating a piece of SW like that is discovering meta data.

When you load a bunch of mp3-s to iTunes it can figure out the artist, songname etc. and immediatelly gives you an organised catalog.
Now how're you going to do that with all these different eBook formats? That's the big question.

One could probably write a Google Desktop Search plugin or a Windows Desktop Search IFilter to extract the metadata.

This is why I would have loved Apple and iTunes to join the ranks of ebook readers. Add a file and all its content is cataloged. Usually music has id3 tags I wonder if something similar could exist for books?

I don't want a program to search for ebooks, I want to be able to sort them according to author, genre, file type, name, and date added. I have so many books and being able to organize them better would save me a lot of time.

PS. If it did comics too that would be icing.

I know that RTF, DOC, and PDF have property tags that can be used for this (as the Sony Reader does.) BBeB and LRF files also seem to have these. Their use by third party content suppliers are often suspect. This may be a starting point.

HTML and TXT are the most problematic.
but then again... what would a human do? start looking into the file and near the top you'd find: author... Title...
We could probably come up with a not too AI program that would try to do some pattern matching to figure out basic metadata

After that all is needed to throw them into a table, that's not a big deal.

HTML should be tagged in a specific way ( <META> ), but for TXT files there is no standard way. Or am I wrong?

I suggest we collect code libraries that give you an API to extract metadata from various formats.

wvware at http://wvware.sourceforge.net/ should be one for MS Office Word format.

This is the best and only ebook sorter that i am aware of

http://www.geocities.com/vangelis_df/vBookSorter/vBookSorter.html

Since I ran out of space on my HD, I keep most of my media files - ebooks, audio books, music - on DVDs. Soon enough it proved impossible to find anything, so I wrote a script that scans a DVD (or CD, or HD directory), and throws all the file names and paths in a MySQL database. Now I can search it with SQL for whatever, and get the exact location where the file is saved.
Metadata isn't included, but reading this thread I realize that it's important and I should add support for it.
I'm also in the process of writing a web application (with Rails) that'll give me a nice interface to search with, instead of raw SQL. It'll have the added benefit of my media library index being accessible from wherever I am, and by friends and family as well, so they can ask me to burn them files they like.
Anyway, this is all rather geeky and definitely not ready for prime time. I'm wondering though whether there's interest in such a tool so I'll put more time into it.

has anyone taken at look at AskSam?

I heard it was good but I've never used it.

http://www.asksam.com/default.asp

Hehe, glad I checked this forum, was just getting ready to do a search to see if I could find any feedback on exactly this same problem.

Previous to my new Reader, I read the occasional ebook on my PDA and then on my SmartPhone, but I never had much of a collection, so organization wasn't much of an issue.

Now, I've been finding and collecting tons of books, from various places, in various formats and stages of conversion. Looking at the tangled mess on my poor laptop, I decided to move everything to the desktop and only keep a nice handful on the laptop (which is where Connect is installed).

While I've quickly come to realize that I'm not likely going to read every single book in my new library, and technically I could just redownload what I need and delete what has already been read, I just can't bring myself to do it. I'd rather convert/reformat the books I come across and have them ready to go when the urge hits me; besides, I'm the type that can never remember stuff I want to read when the time comes to decide, so keeping a library which I can easily browse will just make me happy.

Anyway, getting on with the point:
@Dopedangel, does that program support indexing, etc. across network?
@Kosst Amojan, AskSam looks interesting. After spending a good couple of hours trying to comb through Google results, I don't know how I missed this one. Did you install the trial? I'd be interested in some feedback on AskSam as well.

Anybody else have suggestions? I'd like to get started while my collection is still somewhat manageable. :D

I'm just sorting mine by Author's name (last, first) in folders, with sub-folders for series listings. Back when I had enough shelf space, I did something similar, alphabetically by Author's last name, then by title -- except for series, of course.

I've got a second set of these for texts I'm still in the process of, um, processing, so I can tell where I am. And I recently added a "Reading Shelf" folder so that I have a place to keep track of the half-dozen or so I plan to read 'next.'

It's all basically modeled after how I handle my books in the 'real' world, so it works well for me, 'cause I'm not really doing anything different. :shrug:

I'm presently keeping the lot on a flash drive, which means I have access to them wherever I am, which is handy for all sorts of reasons. :nice:

Uh, yeah. My sorting on disk is remarkably similar to my paper library... Well with one exception, I can find any book/series in my paper library in about one minute or less.

We've got three tall and two short bookshelves with "current" books and boxes of older "keepers", my nightstand has two shelves which are both stacked and there are (hmm...) I think three more sitting just below the lamp.

On the laptop hard drive, there's some here, some over there, some that I started to sort, some that are named quite obscurely (which I should have changed upon acquiring), etc. I know it sounds like a mess, and honestly looks like one too, but I've got a good idea of what I have, it's just a matter of finding it when I want it. :/

Additionally, I'd like something I can scan through and find all those "must haves" that I didn't have time to read when I came across them and knew I'd forget when I had the desire to read something new.

This is completely different from my paper habits, which is usually "buy as needed", which means I'm quite familiar with what I've got; but with so many free books out there, $50 credit from Connect, special pricing on bundles, etc. I have more stuff waiting to be read than I know what to do with. And I am happily sorry to say, it's not getting any better...

Came across this page for InfoLayout (http://www.trietech.com/infolayout.php#1)--another indexing application. This one allows for virtual folders and descriptions. $25US for the full deal. I haven't tried this yet myself...

For paper books, I like Readerware (http://readerware.com/). You can scan barcodes and look books up by ISBN, and it will fill in all kinds of metadata (and even get the cover art, if available) from sources like Amazon and the US Library of Congress. I plan to try to use it for ebooks, too-- actually, I'd like to keep the same title in the same record (despite the fact that the ISBNs might be different) so I can easily check to see how much of my paper library I have covered in digital editions, and vice versa. Readerware has extra fields you can customize for metadata the programmer didn't think of, but it's already quite complete, at least for pBooks. Admittedly, it wasn't designed to work with eBooks, but with the custom fields you could store file type, path, removable media identifier (e.g. a CD or DVD number or name), etc. And you can keep track of what you've read and books you'd like to buy, but don't yet own.

A bit prematurely, I know, but this post (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=58293#post58293) mentions a program called Biblioskop which may be the answer to our organizing prayers. I haven't installed it yet, but it is downloaded (please note it is in early beta--v0.25). I am going to install and poke around with it after this post.

You can do it on line at librarything.com - I think you get a free trial of a couple hundred books. Above that there is a small annual fee, or a one time lifetime fee ($10 & $25 respectively about a year ago). There is also a program called BookCat - available at http://www.fnprg.com/.

I actually saw BookCat previously while searching around the net. The main issue (for me at least), is trying to catalog and organize what I have on disk. Ideally, I would like to have something that allows me to figure out I've got two copies of the same book in different locations or maybe in different formats, etc.

After I bought my Reader I went on a spree collecting everything I could possibly want from Gutenberg, then from many other various sources resulting in a smattering of PDF, RTF, TXT, some HTML and lately LRFs. I would be happy to dump everything into one directory on my desktop, load a program that will scan the whole lot and allow me to then tag and organize them from there. If I really had my way, it would support (natively or via plug-in) the BBeB format so all those Connect books with non-descriptive names could still be parsed/perused and tagged (internally) for easy searching later.

Whew! Obviously, entering titles by hand is something I'd like to avoid, otherwise I would just make a spreadsheet or adapt an Access database for the purpose, or just clean and organize the whole thing by hand using descriptive file names and directories. I'm still crossing my fingers that a good, but affordable, solution will pop up. The app I listed above (Biblioskop) looks like it has some promise, but I haven't been able to spend a lot of time digging around in it yet. I suspect that by the time I do, they will have a new release available. ;)

I



Whew! Obviously, entering titles by hand is something I'd like to avoid, otherwise I would just make a spreadsheet or adapt an Access database for the purpose, or just clean and organize the whole thing by hand using descriptive file names and directories. I'm still crossing my fingers that a good, but affordable, solution will pop up.
I've got my book folder organized by author. I sure would not like to have to enter all the 5000 files by hand!

What I really wish I had was a combination of Biblioskop and ReaderWare, I think. I'm trying to convert my entire paper library to e format. ReaderWare lets me scan ISBN barcodes and looks up all info such as title, author, cover art, etc. from a long list of available sources. It seems that Biblioskop does something similar for online files. Somehow I need to tie the two together so it can recognize when I've got an ebook format of the same work in paper (or, for that matter, hardcover and paperback versions of the same work, which I have a few of). Then I'd like it to do things like calculate how much overlap there is between the two formats, or make lists of books that I have in paper but not yet in eBooks, or search available eBook sources to see if it can find eBook versions for works not yet matched, and gather cost info.

Oh well, maybe someone will write such a thing someday.

... those Connect books with non-descriptive names ...This may be of no use to you, but I'll throw it out just in case -- those files work just fine if you rename them in Windows Explorer. The meta data is what the Reader (and ConnSoft) look at, so they don't give a flying flip what the actual filename is. I've renamed all of mine so I can tell what they are later without loading them into ConnSoft. It's a bit of a pain when you've got several to do, but if you do them as you get them, it's no big deal. :nice:

Check also this (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9642).

Hi,

I'm working on a program that, I hope, will be useful as an eBook explorer.

Please see its features and To do list at http://www.iardsoft.com/ebook.php
It's written entirely in Java, so it runs on Linux, Windows, etc. It requires Java JRE 1.4.
It will be freeware, maybe Open Source.
For now it's relatively stable :happy2: so, if anyone wants to give it a try, I'll send it.

Please advise what features should be added.

Thanks

@iard

I would like to try your program. Didn't see a place to download it on your site.

I came across this (http://www.surfpack.com/software/ebooklibrary/) site last week, though I have yet to try any of the programs.

OK, now you can download it from the same address: http://www.iardsoft.com/ebook.php

Please read the ReadMe.txt...

I would like to receive feedback on how it works. Thanks for trying it.

downloaded today and will give it a try and of course give feedback.
Thanks

I tried it on a folder with Palm zTXT (Windows XP) and it works well. Loading time is surprisingly fast :). I will try it with linux in the next few days.

Some suggestions:
- Possibility to only display the file name and not the full path
- resizable window (fullscreen)
- setting for a default folder

Thank you for your work, I will keep checking :)

Hi guys,

I created a simple Ebook catalogue application for my own use, but decided to make it available, for free of course.

I'm willing to expand it (time permitting) to meet any specific features you think would be cool.

You basically tell it the folder locations where your Ebooks are kept, and it will look in all sub-folders for matching Ebooks (it supports extensions of PDF, CHM, LIT, DOC, HTM, HTML, RTF, TXT, DJV, DJVU, PDB and PRC at the moment but I can easily add additional extension support).

Whenever you get new Ebooks, just start the "Update Library" process and the new books will be picked up and added to the library.

If you know the ISBN of your E-book (or the corresponding print edition), then it will also download the cover-art and author/publisher details from my server.

I'm also currently working on a plugin system (very early stages) that will allow third party developers to develop plugins. For example, to export a selected book to your hardware reader, or to generate a text list/csv of your Ebooks.

The software runs on Windows XP only and requires the Microsoft .NET framework 1.1 or greater to be installed.

You can find it at http://www.myebooklibrary.co.uk

oops. double post...

@ waveydavey: Could you add LRF for the Sony Reader to the supported file types?

@ waveydavey: Could you add LRF for the Sony Reader to the supported file types?

Sure. I'll make the changes and upload a new version tomorrow AM.

Wow, I'll try this out tonite

@ waveydavey: Could you add LRF for the Sony Reader to the supported file types?

v1.01 Beta is now available from the website which adds support for Sony Reader LRF files.

There is an update file which will upgrade your v1.00 installation. There is no need to reinstall the whole application.

:cool:

Thanks.

Hmm its a lazy saturday morning and I just discovered this thread. Just thought I'd point out that I wrote the libprs500 GUI to solve exactly these problems for myself. At the moment it supports metadata extraction from LRF and RTF files, will add PDF later. Also its designed around the concept that a single logical book can be implemented in various formats. It has backend support for the SONY reader and soon for the REB 1100 thanks to ashkulz. Also it will have the ability to convert various formats to LRF. It has the ability to display ebook lists sorted by various criteria as well as searching metadata.

Ofcourse it still in its early stages so not everything works as well as it should, but its open source and cross platform, so its only going to get better with time ;-)

Hmm its a lazy saturday morning and I just discovered this thread. Just thought I'd point out that I wrote the libprs500 GUI to solve exactly these problems for myself. At the moment it supports metadata extraction from LRF and RTF files, will add PDF later. Also its designed around the concept that a single logical book can be implemented in various formats. It has backend support for the SONY reader and soon for the REB 1100 thanks to ashkulz. Also it will have the ability to convert various formats to LRF. It has the ability to display ebook lists sorted by various criteria as well as searching metadata.

Ofcourse it still in its early stages so not everything works as well as it should, but its open source and cross platform, so its only going to get better with time ;-)
now i gotta install python

now i gotta install python

You knew the day would come ;-)

Are there any user reviews about any of these packages? I am curious about the feasibility / usability of what's been recommended before I give it a whirl.

Hi, this is my first post here. :) I'm using Ice Reader Proffesional for reading and organising ebooks on my PC. Works for me, and it can also export to txt, which will work for any reader I guess. But I would like something which can look online and get more info about the books, sort of like CDDB for audio CDs.

This is also my first post here as well.

The problem is that the meta data read isn't necessarily conducive to sorting by genre / series / topic. I hunted around for something like MP3TagStudio to do bulk renaming (including directory tree) but could not find anything that suited my needs.

I was able to use ICE Book Reader Pro...dump a whole directory into it and import all the titles, tweaked some authors, add series, series# / genre information etc. and export the relevant fields into an excel file and concactonated the fields to make the relevant structure and export to a text file.

ex. On Basilisk Staion.lit ;
\000_By Series\Honor Harrington\01 - On Basilisk Station - David Weber.lit

I did actually end up using MP3TagStudio to do the recursive directory file renaming...but it would be just as easy to flip into a .bat file.

I took a test bed of about 300 ebooks in various formats and the actual sort and renaming took a few seconds. I made up a few other versions of the to sort by author and by genre as well.

Clunky...but necessity was the mother for me as I have next to no coding skills.

Hi, this is my first post here. :) I'm using Ice Reader Proffesional for reading and organising ebooks on my PC. Works for me, and it can also export to txt, which will work for any reader I guess. But I would like something which can look online and get more info about the books, sort of like CDDB for audio CDs.
Readerware (readerware.com) does that, but you need an ISBN number or some other unique identifier for the books.

I would like something which can look online and get more info about the books, sort of like CDDB for audio CDs.

Hello zhopudey,

Have you heard of Librarything.com (http://www.librarything.com). Its a web 2.0 social networking site for books. It doesn't index your actual ebook files or anything but you can do so much with it.

You can create an account and list 200 books for free. You can enter the ISBN and it will go out and get the rest of the info for you including the cover art. There is even a way to scan books in by their UPC if you have the right type of scanner.

One of the coolest things about the site is that it will cross reference your library with others and you can check out their book list and you might find something else that you want to read. You can also type in a book name and it will give you suggestions of other books to read.

You can add tags to your books, reviews, and a whole lot more.

I know this isn't specifically for ebooks and it doesn't index any files on your PC but I thought you or others might like it.

I have tried eLibPro (http://songstech.com/elibpro.html) that worked pretty well on hard copy books. It allows links to the electronic version as part of the book info.

As far as organizing my eBooks, so far it is purely by author (A\Last, First - Title.ext), but I am always on the lookout for something better.

Now, for finding copies of files, there are programs such as mmd dupefinder (http://www.mmdfactory.com/dupfinder.html), but it is apparently not checking MD5 sums, as some of the hits are definitely not duplicates. If someone knows of a better program, pass it along as well.

What's the best program or method to catalog your books both dead tree and electronic? I want to keep a list of what I have and what I have read. Thanks!

I use just a text document where I move books from the unread portion to the read list. I enter a completion date so I can look back to what I've read and when. For unread books and those I want to reread, I keep a short prioritized list at the top of the document. I occasionally update and reload this document onto my Reader so I don't have to rely on memory to know what's next.

Perhaps unrelated, I made an initial go of using LibraryThing.com. It lets you keep an online catalog of books - either of all that you own, just the ones you like, or a hypothetical collection. The appealing part to me is then the ability to match those catalogs to other people's catalogs to see what else they have. I'm always looking for recommendations of good books with a similar quality or feel to some that I have already read (Hesse, for example). This is perhaps an odd way of doing that. I could imagine that it or some other site exists that will let you sort your catalog by a read/unread tag.

I use an Access database. Gives virtually limitless flexibility.

Use the libprs500 GUi, that's what it's meant for. You can use a dummy file for pbooks.

Use the libprs500 GUi, that's what it's meant for. You can use a dummy file for pbooks.
Does the libprs500 GUI have a field to say if I've read the book or not or a place to put in a comment so I can put in that info?

I use an Access database. Gives virtually limitless flexibility.
That's actually a good idea.

Does the libprs500 GUI have a field to say if I've read the book or not or a place to put in a comment so I can put in that info?

It has a comments field.

What's the best program or method to catalog your books both dead tree and electronic? I want to keep a list of what I have and what I have read. Thanks!You might want to look at Readerware. It's a cross-platform book database program with a wide assortment of features. For instance, with a bar code scanner, you can scan the code on your paper books, and Readerware will go out to various sites in the net, collect the book info like title, author, and publisher, and fill it in for you. Since the big problem in any such effort is data entry, this is a boon. Readerware also has a PalmOS client you can extract a subset to, to do things like keep your current want list handy.

Readerware is written in Java, and available for Windows, Mac OS/X, and Linux, but should run in anything with a current JVM.

http://www.readerware.com
______
Dennis

I've looked at LibraryThing a bit more. You can add tags of your choice to the books in your catalog (e.g., read, unread, need to reread, need to buy, should recommend these to MR, etc.). If you have a scanner, the book entry to your catalog is rapid. I found it easy enough without one. Type in an author or partial title and select from the list. It'll provide you with a book cover image, the ISBN, call number, etc. Add your tags, if you like, one at a time or in batches. Downsides: I don't see a provision to download your catalog besides printing it. And......[wait for it]......it's free - but only if limited to 200 books. For more, there's a $10 annual or $25 lifetime fee.

I think I'll just do the database thing.

Another vote for Readerware, because it can look up so much from the ISBN (which it can get from the barcode), but Librarything has much of the same functionality.

Can Readerware handle the fct that if I have an ebook edition and a pbook edition that they are different books?

Can Readerware handle the fct that if I have an ebook edition and a pbook edition that they are different books?
Readerware uses the ISBN as the key to identify books. It also supports having multiple copies of a single book, each with a different location. I imagine that this capability was originally added to support libraries and used book stores, but it sure seems like it would allow you to have one copy on your shelf and another on your computer (for example).

I own Readerware, and use it to catalog my paper books. I haven't started entering my electronic books yet, but that's how I'm currently planning to handle them.

ReaderWare doesn't seem to know about different editions of the same book, i.e. same title and author, but different binding (hc/pb/ebook) and hence different ISBN. I haven't updated my copy in about a year, though, so maybe the author has fixed that by now. I did write to him about the problem a while back. I guess it would be non-trivial to automate the link, because the title or author might have been spelled slightly differently in the multiple entries, but I still think you ought to be able to link up the different editions quickly and easily.

I use Book Collector from collectorz.com for my pbook, or at least I was I haven't been to good about keeping it up to date. It's decent software. I've also messed with Shelfari which is an interesting site.

Do any of these programs such as Book Collector or Readerware allow me to put in an ebook and tell it what formats I have the book in? For example, I download a book from Baen in LIT format. Then I convert it to LRF. Now I have it in both LIT and LRF. Would i need two entries, or would a comments field be available? Also, because these are ebook, I would hope there would be no field for whether it's paperback or hardback since that would not be appropriate for these. Would be for my dead tree books though.

Readerware has user-configurable fields that you could use for this purpose, or you could use a general-purpose comments field, as you suggested. You can download a trial version for free from http://readerware.com. (I have no financial interest in this company.)

Do any of these programs such as Book Collector or Readerware allow me to put in an ebook and tell it what formats I have the book in? For example, I download a book from Baen in LIT format. Then I convert it to LRF. Now I have it in both LIT and LRF. Would i need two entries, or would a comments field be available? Also, because these are ebook, I would hope there would be no field for whether it's paperback or hardback since that would not be appropriate for these. Would be for my dead tree books though.

For Book Collector you could select ebook as the format & then put the file types in a comments area or you could create custom formats & have separate entries for each. It's pretty flexible.

They do have a demo you can download to try it out for your self.



~Brian

I'll have to give these programs a trial and see how they work for my needs. Thanks all!

I've been using Tellico for a while now (http://periapsis.org/tellico/), and it works pretty well.
I use it for both my bibliography for scientific articles (it has a BibTeX export function) and my paper books (though that file is in desperate need of updating).

It has good support for downloading information on the book based on the ISBN number an such.
Furthermore it is a collection manager program, so it can be used for any kind of collection. There are some pre-defined ones like book, video, music, wine, coin, etc. but you can also define your own by entering the fields.
The fields can even be added to an existing or predefined collection if needed.

It would help a lot if it actually ran with Windows.

Hmmm, that's a little snag yeah :)

Perhaps it runs under Cygwin, but that would require a bit of work I guess.

I think Cygwin is more hassle then it is worth. I already have two programs to check out sometime. Plus I could make an Access database if need be.

Once its ported to KDE4 it should run under windows natively.

I don't think it will be ported as it says it's for KDE 3.x.

most KDE apps will be ported. Most of the porting is quite automatic. Of course it depends on how much time the author has.

It annoys me greatly that there is not a mainstream program for cataloging ebooks and such. I make it a point to buy books that come with an electronic version, or just the electronic version itself.

I also have begun converting some of my docs into LIT files (then LRF) so I can take them wherever I need to go. As a programmer having books like this instantly available is a huge win, and toting a library is much harder than 15 or 20 2 GB MicroSD cards. Trying to figure out where the book is though is driving me bonkers.

Since there son't seem to be a mainstream cataloger (besides Readerware which costs $ and doesn'thave the features I want anyway) I think I will just write one. Being a programmer at heart, this shouldn't bee too bad. Throw something like MS SQL Express as the backend with a 4 GB limit should be enough for any cataloger. I will have to do some research to see if there is a cataloging service you can hit 9library of congress, amazon, etc) like you can for mp3's.

Since I haven't started writing it yet, feel free to toss requests here or shoot me an email or something. I can't promise dates or anything because they will be based on my time and what features we come up with.

what I can promise is that it will be windows based written in visual basic (maybe MS Access for a version or 2 since it is so easy) I wouldn't mind screenshots of your access DB HarryT, it will get a jump start on things. One of the limitations of Access though is that you have to have access to use it, so that will exclude a lot of users since access is about as much as a eReader now :(

Umm is there some reason you dont want to use libprs500?

Can libprs500 take an ISBN code and go out on the net and have a lookup of the info?

Not yet, but that will be an easy feature to implement.

Umm is there some reason you dont want to use libprs500?

Because I didn't see it. I will check it out tonight. But to JSWolf's point, data entry is the bane of any cataloging software. Without an auto lookup feature, it may as well be worthless, especially for me. Since my cataloging 'program' right now is a thousand directories separated by who owns it (Some books are for work, and thus work owns the book in reality so I can not loan them out, etc) or by category or by author, doing data entry is not going to happen. Obviously on quite a few of my personal books there is not an ISBN code since the book was never published and I will need to do some data entry when and where I feel like it, but the title and file directory location such can still be pulled from the book.

My ebook Directory (http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Evadman/ebook.JPG) (copy paste to address bar or you will get bad referrer graphic) And yes, it is on a RAID 5 NAS device that is tape backup'd.

weird, my post said a moderator needed to review it. anyway, when it shows up this will make more sense :P

I installed libprs500, and started playing with it. got some errors on installing the drivers, which I assume are for direct accessing the reader. that explains why the program shows my reader as having more memory than it actually does, and that my card has 0 bytes free when there is actually about 900 mb free.

the metadata edit is a nice feature, that is one of the things I was looking for. It was a pain creating batch files to edit the metadata for bulk files. Metadata is, and will always be, one of the most important parts of any electronic file. Be it a picture, MP3, ebook, database, whatever. The best tool I have found for editing metadata is for MP3's and called 'ID3 TagIT'; All it does is metadata. We need a tool like that for ebooks, where you can take a file, add, modify or find (aka ping library of congress, amazon, whatever) whatever metadata you need, and store it with the file. Obviously this will take a good amount of work, since there is no defacto standard for ebook metadata, though lit probably is the closest. that means there are quite a few different standards the metadata tool must be able to use.

<edit>
Actually, it doesn't edit the metadata, it just looks like it does. I edited the metadata for author on about 40 ebooks in lit format, converted to lrf, and the author did not change. I checked the lit file, and that too is the same, the change I made did not actualy get transfered tot he file, dispite the tool saying the author is now who I specified.
</edit>

integrating the sony reader access into the tool is a damn nice touch as well, it just doesn't work for me. Which is just fine, I don't use the internal memory, as the size is a joke. With how much memory costs these days, ($8 a gig or so) there should be a few gb easily in the reader itself. I just swap microsd cards.

Improvements I can see:
Remove the 'bulk convert' from the menu if it doesn't work. That just makes users angry :P
As near as I can tell, there are only the 6 fields that can be sorted in a collection. (title, author, size, date, rating, publisher) there needs to be user defined fields and values. Something like the tags that you have implemented, but that looks to only be searchable. Along the same lines, there needs to be a 'location' field where the file structure is mirrored in the tool, or the tool makes the file structure, or options to make the tool do that (mirror or make file structure) as most users will already have some kind of structure. Few will have a thousand ebooks in the same directory :)

The book cover is not read from lit files. The default image is displayed.

There is an ampersand in front of the 'rating' label on the metadata page

adding a book (or set of books) takes a long time. Based on my admitidly brief calculations, it would take about 900 days to add my entire collection if I were to do it in bulk. I doubt it would take that long, as the time probably scales reverse logarithmetically, especially being written in python.

There are usability enhancements that would greatly increase the pen of the tool. The help needs to be more robust. There is not enough information on how to do specific tasks, or, if it is there, it is non-intuitive to find.



Best tool I found so far though :)

It's an open source effort, which means you're welcome to jump in. Submit a few patches, and once I know I can trust your code, I'll give you svn access.

A lot of the issues you raised already have open tickets and I will get around to them when I get time. If there aren't already tickets, open new ones. :-)

It doesn't save the changed metadata to the file it keeps it in the database. Mainly because I don't have the time to write metadata editing routines for all the various ebook formats. At them moment there is write support only for RTF and LRF (though it doesn't actually edit the metadata when saving to disk, i haven't got around to implementing the hooks).

I would contribute, but I don't know python. Languages I know (http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=70&threadid=2055861&enterthread=y#26609661)

Well there are other ways to help. Bug reports and documentation. Also python is really easy to learn, and a rewarding experience as well :-)

Because I didn't see it. I will check it out tonight. But to JSWolf's point, data entry is the bane of any cataloging software. Without an auto lookup feature, it may as well be worthless, especially for me. Since my cataloging 'program' right now is a thousand directories separated by who owns it (Some books are for work, and thus work owns the book in reality so I can not loan them out, etc) or by category or by author, doing data entry is not going to happen. Obviously on quite a few of my personal books there is not an ISBN code since the book was never published and I will need to do some data entry when and where I feel like it, but the title and file directory location such can still be pulled from the book.
The features I want or need is the ability to look up a book from the ISBN and possibly fill in a desctription. The ability to specify multiple formats for the book LRF, LIT, PRC, HC, PB, HTML, etc.. depends on how many copies I have. specifiying which file is the source used to convert if it's not DRM and I did convert it, DRM or not DRM, a description field so I can know what the book is other then forgetting, cover image, if I've read it or not, and for each format where it's stored, if it's an ebook, the ability to click format and get it to load if that's setup properly. I'm not being too picky I hope.

My ebook Directory (http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/Evadman/ebook.JPG) (copy paste to address bar or you will get bad referrer graphic) And yes, it is on a RAID 5 NAS device that is tape backup'd.
I did the copy/paste and it still didn't work. Why not just attach the image?

I'm working on a lookup feature that should allow you to look up book metadata based on ISBN or author/title/publisher information. It requires a free account at isbndb.com

Try also Amazon. You can use ISBN as ASIN.
There's even a Python wrapper: http://code.google.com/p/boto/ Except it doesn't support ECS at the moment...

Thanks, that's a good tip.

Is this feature (ISBN lookup for metada) functional on the latest (0.4.20) release?
Each time I've tried it, I got the following message :
'NoneType' object is unsubscriptable
Detailed traceback:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "libprs500\gui2\dialogs\fetch_metadata.pyo", line 129, in fetch_metadata
File "libprs500\ebooks\metadata\isbndb.pyo", line 130, in create_books
File "libprs500\ebooks\metadata\isbndb.pyo", line 43, in fetch_metadata
TypeError: 'NoneType' object is unsubscriptable

Should I create a Ticket for this, or did I do something wrong ?
Thanks !

Yeah its functional. Create a ticket. EDIT: Actually it's already fixed in svn :-) But I'm curious what query caused this error.

EDIT2: That error is almost certainly cause by an incorrect key

Sounds like a job for Ruby on Rails and Amazon Webservices (for the lookup). Once I actually get my book reader I might look into it. Shouldn't be too hard to do as long as Amazons webservice does what I think it does (Allows you to look up books).

EDIT: isbndb.com - Missed the post about this. Looks ideal.

That error is almost certainly cause by an incorrect key

My fault : I misundertood the key with the isbn number :smack:
Everything is working fine : I enjoy more and more using libprs!

Thanks !

there's also listal.com, web2.0 community driven site, not only books, but fully free...

BUMP!

http://www.librarything.com/

Personally I just use an Excel spreadsheet; with columns for title, author, subject, format and location.

I have given this some thought myself lately because my files are a disaster. My business background is in database management so I am actually embarassed when friends see my computer right now.....

I know for certain the MS Access has a template for books. In adddition, even really old versions of Goldmine would work as well and provide easy reference between author and title - showing relationships without having to create them yourself. I am not quite as fond of the reporting functions but I really don't plan on running any reports...just keeping things in order. One of the things I really like about goldmine is the ultra simple way to link the file to the record.

However, these would have to be managed from the desk or laptop...I don't think I would ever be happy with a "Pocket" versions of these databases.

If neither of these sounds good just start with a simple spreadsheet. At least when you find a program the data will be in order.

I hope that helps. If anyone hears of something that is more portable I would also like to hear of it!

Good luck!

I have over 5000 ebooks, novels, comics and scanned ebooks in my collection with a part of them on my harddisk and part of them on my external storage HDD. I also have a collection of over 50 books on my USB that I connect to my iLiad to read.

My biggest concern in using an ebook library was the time and effort it would require to add information about the books and then formatting them.

I found a software called "my ebook library" on the net. It is a beautiful software. The most interesting thing is that you identify the directories where your ebooks are saved and it will automatically add them to your library. If the book has the ISBN in the file name, the software can go online and get the complete information about the book including front cover shot, authors name, date of publishing and complete title and update the library automatically.

If the ISBN number is not in the file name the software allows you to open the file and select the ISBN number and then it will bring all the information from the net.

The website for the software is

http://www.myebooklibrary.co.uk

download, install and enjoy.

Asim Baig

Best way is just to catalog it first by author then into genre, it does take a while to get into order ( and make sure you defrag and back up often as swapping so many folders about on same drive will eventually collapse it) but while your doing it your own brain makes mental notes as to where everything is.

I'm not gonna lie it starts of easy a few genre's (sci-fi / horror ect) but before you know it it gets complicated because you adding stuff to it every day. And to lose it (i have once) or for your hd to break or die is hard because of the effort you put into your library.

I have one .
Merry Christmas!!!

Stop thinking about ebooks! You are limiting your possibilities by a lot.

Think DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT! Any program that can do this will do what you need. I work for a huge insurance company that has operations in all 50 states and many other countries. Because of legal mumbo jumbo we have to store many different copies of the same (almost the same) document in a manner that we can look it up easily. Sometimes they are in closed formats, editable formats, graphics, text only, draft, approved by legal, new editions, saved in English, German, French. Legal for New York, Legal for Texas, Legal in Michigan...you get the idea. It presents the same problem that we all have with our ebooks in their many formats.

Any basic database that allows you to make fundamental changes to field names (so you can name them intelligently - author, publish date, etc...) as well as link to a document will do the job better than 90% of what has been mentioned.

The database becomes your directory!

You can link one book to as many copies (formats) as you want, even if they are in completly different areas. The ebooks don't even have to be well organized - although I recommend it - because their location is no longer important. Just open the database, click on the title, then go to the link for what you need.

If you have access to any databse right now just look at what it does. You might see Name, Company, Address, Job title, photo - but if the field names can be edited it really says Title, Author, Genre, Publish Date and link to ebook.

You probably have what you need right now. Even better - you already know how to use it.

Good Luck!

Stop thinking about ebooks! You are limiting your possibilities by a lot.

Think DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT!

<...>

Any basic database that allows you to make fundamental changes to field names (so you can name them intelligently - author, publish date, etc...) as well as link to a document will do the job better than 90% of what has been mentioned.

The database becomes your directory!I concur, save for one small problem: assuming you've designed a database schema that tracks what you want and the relationships between those items, how do you get the data into the database?

The advantage to programs like the one recommended earlier is that they try to do that for you, scanning selected locations and importing files of the specified types.

And solutions like Readerware for paper volumes do things like interface to bar code scanners, so you can scan the code and have the database search various internet sites to fill in the information on titles you've scanned.

I have thousands of electronic titles in one form or another, and probably as many paper books. There is no way I will attempt to manually enter the data for each title, one at a time. Without an automated way of getting as much data into the database as possible, I'm not going to attempt a custom solution. I'd still be doing data entry a year from now.
______
Dennis

If you have thousands of titles now and don't want to do any manual input than I hope you already have some of the info stored into some sort of organized fashion.

An Excel spreadsheet will take care of most of what you would need. However, the choice of your database will determine if you have to do any additional work. Every database I have worked with has a feature to inport a spreadsheet.

However, if you don't have even that much - well....you waited too long to start now!

Well, no, not really.

I have tried using search programs to fill certain info but they leave a lot to be desired. For example...if you want to know what publishing house put out a certain book, that info will always be available online. I tend to leave fields like that blank in historical data. I just load the info when it is easy for me at a later date - or not at all. But - when I loaded a book into my hardrive and what changes were made to the format etc...that is info that I would have to enter myself. for the purpose of knowing what I have and what I can do with it , it is far more important to me. I just make sure I enter complete data on new entries as I get them.

The other issue is that search/pick data is not always correct. While I would likely be inclined to use such a function if I were in your position, I would be cautious about accepting the data provided as gospel.

If you have 5000 titles...one way or the other...you have a job ahead of you.

Just keep in mind that as negative as this post may sound I am really just envious or your library!

If you have thousands of titles now and don't want to do any manual input than I hope you already have some of the info stored into some sort of organized fashion.I accept that some manual input will be required, but I don't want it to be all manual input. Frankly, the benefits of having the database would not be equal to the work needed to create it.

And I'm reasonably organized. Paper books are shelved by type, and by author within type for fiction, and other ways for non-fiction. There is some adjustment caused by format: the same shelves don't hold paperbacks, hardbacks, and "coffee table" volumes. Shelving is by size, first.

eBooks are organized in a similar fashion, with a hierarchal directory structure for categories. I'm doing some cleanup and rearrangement to make it a bit easier to locate specific stuff.

An Excel spreadsheet will take care of most of what you would need. However, the choice of your database will determine if you have to do any additional work. Every database I have worked with has a feature to inport a spreadsheet.I have Excel here, as well as Access, Postgresql, Interbase, and several other things. Creating a database to rice, slice, and dice the data as desired would be the least of the problems.

However, if you don't have even that much - well....you waited too long to start now!I have the software and the requisite knowledge. What I lack is time and energy.

Well, no, not really.

I have tried using search programs to fill certain info but they leave a lot to be desired. For example...if you want to know what publishing house put out a certain book, that info will always be available online. I tend to leave fields like that blank in historical data. I just load the info when it is easy for me at a later date - or not at all. But - when I loaded a book into my hardrive and what changes were made to the format etc...that is info that I would have to enter myself. for the purpose of knowing what I have and what I can do with it , it is far more important to me. I just make sure I enter complete data on new entries as I get them.Oh, certainly. There will be data that will be blank, either because I haven't needed to track it down, or because it may not exist.

The other issue is that search/pick data is not always correct. While I would likely be inclined to use such a function if I were in your position, I would be cautious about accepting the data provided as gospel.I don't accept any data as gospel. But I'm willing to accept some inaccuracies, to be handled on an exception basis. Essentially, if I find out it's wrong, I'll correct it. If I never learn it's wrong, I won't care, because it means no occasion arose to demonstrate it was wrong.

If you have 5000 titles...one way or the other...you have a job ahead of you.

Just keep in mind that as negative as this post may sound I am really just envious or your library!I began collecting books back before personal databases on PCs were even a gleam in anyone's eye, and I have a fair bit of stuff that predates barcodes.

eBooks are a more recent phenomena.

I just did a head count: I have an ebooks directory, containing fiction, non-fiction, and reference titles, and a Docs directory containing a variety of computer technical documentation.

The ebooks directory is 5.49 GB in size, with 25,021 files in 1,776 directories, and the Docs directory is 4.12 GB in size, with 102,234 files in 2,298 folders.

Number of files does not equal number of ebooks: my preferred ebook format is HTML, and many volumes consist of a number of HTML files and associated image files.

But it's still a fair number of books, stories, and articles.
______
Dennis

I just finished cataloging 7,984 music albums (from CDs, Lps, 45s, 78s, and reel-to-reel tapes -- now stored in the basement.) The ebooks should be a snap after that.

I just finished cataloging 7,984 music albums (from CDs, Lps, 45s, 78s, and reel-to-reel tapes -- now stored in the basement.) The ebooks should be a snap after that.What data are you collecting?

I have about 1,500 vinyl LPs, but I'd want not only artist, album title, and label, but producer, engineer, song titles, session musicians, cover artist/designer, etc,, etc.

Again, getting the data into the database would be the killer.
______
Dennis

I have over 5000 ebooks, novels, comics and scanned ebooks in my collection with a part of them on my harddisk and part of them on my external storage HDD. I also have a collection of over 50 books on my USB that I connect to my iLiad to read.

My biggest concern in using an ebook library was the time and effort it would require to add information about the books and then formatting them.

I found a software called "my ebook library" on the net. It is a beautiful software. The most interesting thing is that you identify the directories where your ebooks are saved and it will automatically add them to your library. If the book has the ISBN in the file name, the software can go online and get the complete information about the book including front cover shot, authors name, date of publishing and complete title and update the library automatically.

If the ISBN number is not in the file name the software allows you to open the file and select the ISBN number and then it will bring all the information from the net.

The website for the software is

http://www.myebooklibrary.co.uk

download, install and enjoy.

Asim Baig

Thanks for the referral and link. I downloaded the software yesterday and it seems to work pretty well. Some additional funcationality would make this software really great:

A way to manually add or import existing book lists (so i could create a comprehensive listing of my books - both paper & electronic - as well as log interesting books for future reference)
A way to import/export data from the database
A way to print books
A place to write out my own comments about the book (although I can append my own comments to the Description box)

I have been managing my book collection via an Excel spreadsheet, but it would be really great to have something a bit more sophisticated.

This "myebooklibrary" software looks like it could become something really good. ... I'm playing with it a bit now, ... it lacks a lot still though too.

I'd kinda like if I could enter in a list of authors at least, ... so that it could check filenames and file paths for author names and such, ... and just assume that if a file contains a string that's also in my "authors list," that string must be the author of said file. things like that would make the data entry a lot easier. I don't want to open every single book and type in the author name, or isbn or any other specific data manually. It should be able to guess a few things and ask me if it guessed correctly... like "in this directory, the folder names represent author names? etc"

I'm guessing that collections are essentially tags right? It would be nice if it checked some kind of categorization like "fiction" and "science" and stuff too from the ISBN and categorized them automatically. Maybe that info isn't really tied to an ISBN number though? I duno how I'd find ISBN number for all these books quickly enough for it to be worth trying anyways though. It'd take an eternity to look up every single book in amazon. As it is, I'm not sure how I could manage to do any sort of data entry with it fast enough to really make progress.

like, ... even just being able to select multiple books at a time in the window and hit "edit" on the whole group at once, so you could give a bunch the same author or something, like you do in itunes, .... at least then some progress could be made.

I'm not sure what it can actually do with the data once it's all loaded either though. It would be a lot more useful if it could then do things like convert the files into one format, and encode stuff like the author and title metadata into the book itself so the data is permanent independent of this particular piece of software.... and maybe once all books are taged and categorized etc, ... it could rename them all with sensible consistent names, and rebuild the organization of my directory structure for me.

I'm also not sure why it relies on amazon. If they have their own database that can look up ISBN numbers, why can't it search that database with the names in the files, and use the info directly to get an ISBN number? why make me click around on some web page looking for it? If it used it's own ISBN database to look up titles and such, it could probably really quickly categorize all my books with good data. I'd probably even pay them for that kind of functionality.

Umm nairbv use libprs500 it implements all those features (except for guessing things about books from filenames which to me is a dicey proposition) and it is in active development.

hmm.... I installed it... I can't figure out any way to add books so that I can start editing them. I see "add books," but it wants me to select a filename. I need to import a whole directory.

Well, you can select more than one book at a time, even if you can't do a recursive import.

And the recursive import is on my TODO list :-)

ah, OK. I'll wait for recursive import then. I don't have time to go into every directory :-P.

I'm kind of curious though if it will make any guesses (or have a way to merge) when a directory contains a bunch of files that represent one book. Most of the time when books are a mess of HTML, they're zipped, but,.. sometimes they're not. I'm not sure how it would go about doing that. Maybe by default it just calls every file a book, but later you could say "these files are the same book" in the UI somewhere? ... or maybe if it sees links to other files in HTML it can assume that the other html files are part of the same book? Sounds like a pain.

Its going to assume all the files in a directory are different versions of the same book. Try to guess what files are part of what book is a mugs game. If you have multiple ebooks in a single directory use the standard import rather than the recursive one.

hm.... well, that won't work for me either then. *most* of my directories are authors or subject directories, ... I have some directories that are books, but it would take far less time for me to go around finding and zipping those book directories (or merging them in some kind of interface) then it would to separate the books by the same author that are in author directories.

It won't even recognize that two .lit files in a directory are separate books? If I have a directory with 10 lit files (or even 10 txt or pdf or doc files or zip or rar files), then it can probably be assumed that those 10 files represent 10 books , ... whereas a directory with 10 HTML files is far more likely to represent a book.

then also though, the directory of HTML files will probably have a subdirectory for images. If I have an HTML file that represents a whole book, and then in the same directory have a bunch of directories that represent other books, ... ugh... what a mess.

What you're asking for is basically the program to be tailored to your specific needs so you don't have to do the work, that's not going to happen with any program. You need to spend some quality time with your collection getting it into some sort of order and thereafter use a cataloging program, whether libprs500 or something else so that this mess never recurs.

I'm just trying to find the software that's appropriate for me, and all I'm saying is that this doesn't look like it will be it, as you describe it.

I do have some things to clean up, but I don't want to have to put every book in it's own directory, even if I could do it at the snap of my fingers. It just doesn't seem like a very clean way to organize files. 99% of the time it would be one file per directory and that just seems silly. Why have directories if they're only ever going to contain one file?

I think most software would be designed to, at a minimum, recognize two different .lit or .prc or .pdf files as being two different books.

I think most software would be designed to, at a minimum, recognize two different .lit or .prc or .pdf files as being two different books.
What I want is for the software to be able to catalog the same ebook but have it listed under different formats. So for example, if I download a HTML source from PG and then convert it to LRF and also have the HTML0 file, that it would be listed as HTML0, LRF, and HTML for the one entry so I know what I have. Also, in the comments, I would put that I used Book Designer to convert it and any special instructions. Also same goes for say a LIT that was converted to LRF using lit2lrf.

jswolf: yeah, I think that would make sense too, ... but would you expect it on import them that way? to make every directory one book? or would you expect to have to merge multiple files that represented one book? I mean, .. if the files had the exact same file name besides extension, and were in the same directory, maybe then you could assume they were the same book. ... but don't most people put all books of a particular author in one directory? ... at least in fiction directories?

What I would do in that case if have the program read the metadata or filename and maybe prompt for combining entries if it found the book title close. But if it found the author and title the same, then combine automatically. That way, it helps to semi-automate things.

@JSWolf: Yeah having multiple formats for the same logical book is precisely why I wrote the book catalouging part of libprs500 in the first place.

@nairbv: You need a directory for a book precisely because over time your books will not have only a single file, since you're likely to convert them into multiple formats to read them on various devices. If all you ever read is DRMed books then there is no point in maintaining an ebook catalog at all. And you're again making too much of a big deal of what is a relatively small issue when using a cataloging program. Sure the initial import is going to be painful to do. But it is just that, the initial import. Once it's done, your cataloging program will manage the book files and you will find accessing them through it's interface far more convenient than rooting around in your filesystem. Subsequent imports are likely to be of at most a handful of books at a time. You need to stop looking for the perfect solution, you'll never find it, and you'll just end up doing nothing. But hey, maybe you'll get lucky and find the "perfect mate" :-)

@kovidgoyal, you're making an assumption about how people organize their books. I organize by author, then by format, then within format folders I have individual books. I think quite a few people do it this way. I'm not saying your program ought to account for this preference-- it's your program, you don't have to provide any functionality beyond what you want to include. But I don't think assuming that everyone groups books by multiple versions within the same directory is valid.

That being said, I don't use libprs500, because I don't have a Sony reader, so my input is moot, I suppose.

Not at all, but you must realize that in designing an import tool, one must make some assumptions about how books are organized. As long as you use a consistent system, designing an import tool for it is easy. It's the consistency that is important. As far as libprs50 is concerned, since it's an open source tool and designed in a modular fashion there is no reason why someone can't write an import filter to suit their particular consistent storage system, and I'll be happy to include it :-)

What I'm working on is using TextPipe to go through my directories and build an XML file to import to FBReader. (I could write a perl script to do it, but I happen to have TextPipe for another purpose, so I might as well use it.)

@kovidgoyal, maybe it would make sense to offer a parameter setting to allow the user to specify the order of import in the recursive directories, e.g. author->book->format vs author->format->book. Then people could pick from a couple of consistent systems. Just a thought.

Yeah but there are infinite such variations and I'm lazy ;)

@kovidgoyal : I've been looking for a e-book inventory/indexing program to use with my Iliad. Your libprs500 program looks like what I need, but am I right in assuming that it's only for the Sony ebook reader?

Well its cataloging functions are independent of device format. But its conversion utilities are only for SONY and it only detects the sony readers as ebook devices. Someone is working ona Kindle driver for it, but not an Illiad driver as far as I am aware.

I been looking for way to organize my books. Only having the reader a few weeks I have gotten 100 books. I am playing with libprs500 and it does a good job of cataloging books. Problem I have is when I want to use it for converting it makes it hard to locate the books you are working with. The get sorted with all the others and I am searching for the books.

It would be nice to have a temp section for converting books. When you are done you can add it to the library or not. Folder structure would be nice too. Maybe you can take it from the collection field.

Otherwise its a great program for converting. Thanks!!

I'm not sure i understand. When you click the save to disk button the converted books are written out in a folder structure.

I'm not sure i understand. When you click the save to disk button the converted books are written out in a folder structure.

Sorry I was not clear. Lets say I have 100 books in libprs500 and I want to convert 5 more. When I import those 5 they are scattered in the list with the other 100 books. I have to search through the list looking for them to work on them. Then when I change the meta info it will move again.

It would be nice to have one icon for the whole library and another for new imported books. I can then work on the 5 books and more them over to the library.

I usually delete all the books I have in libprs500 to make it easer to work with the few books. Then I can not import the books back and keep some of the meta information like the book cover.

Was that clear?

You only have to sort your books by date imported to see the last imported first in libprs500 (and I think it's the default view) :)

Yeah just sort by date.

Well its cataloging functions are independent of device format. But its conversion utilities are only for SONY and it only detects the sony readers as ebook devices. Someone is working ona Kindle driver for it, but not an Illiad driver as far as I am aware.

Did that someone ever get very far with this?? The Kindle driver, I mean.

There is a kindle driver in the calibre source tree that Marielle, the person that wrote it claims to work with his kindle on windows. Not having a Kindle myself, I can't really test it.

There is a kindle driver in the calibre source tree that Marielle, the person that wrote it claims to work with his kindle on windows. Not having a Kindle myself, I can't really test it.

Ah .... so now I just need to find this "source tree" thingie. Thanks. :D

where's my ebook library? Its site seems down! I really like its function of extracting isbn from filenames!!!! I plan to rename all my books with their isbn+title, this program will come as a handy management of them then.

eBook Library is the program Sony wrote to talk to the 500/505.

eBook Library is the program Sony wrote to talk to the 500/505.

I'm sorry but I meant the independent freeware called "My Ebook Library". Its website used to be "www.myebooklibrary.co.uk". but that site has been down for quite some time. I wonder what happened to them.