Series Management

[Little_bear]

I am using Calibre extensively for my 2000+ library and I can say I don't know how I could do it without Calibre. I have several books that belongs to multiple series. For example Mars[/B] by Ben Bova is book #1 in "Mars" series, but book #4 in "The Grand Tour" series. It is any way to add more that one series per book? For now I add a note in the Comments, but I would like to be able to sort the books in the Series column.

Thank you!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Little_bear

I am using Calibre extensively for my 2000+ library and I can say I don't know how I could do it without Calibre. I have several books that belongs to multiple series. For example Mars[/B] by Ben Bova is book #1 in "Mars" series, but book #4 in "The Grand Tour" series. It is any way to add more that one series per book? For now I add a note in the Comments, but I would like to be able to sort the books in the Series column.

Thank you!

I use Hierarchical series. It does not allow a primary
index, but at least it ties it to the primary series:

Mars.The Grand Tour[4]
or is it
The Grand Tour.Mars[1]

[fidvo]

If you're talking about a series-within-a-series (e.g. the High Halleck and Estcarp Cycles within Andre Norton's Witch World series) then it's not too difficult. My suggestion is to set up a custom Subseries column. Then you can track the position of each book in both the main series and the more specific subseries. That's what I do, and it works fairly well.

If the two series are independent (e.g. the book is part of a main series but it's also in some kind of "best of genre" collection) it becomes more difficult. Again, a custom column for a secondary series could work, but only if the book only shows up in one of these collections. If you need more than that, perhaps the Reading List plugin could help.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by fidvo

If the two series are independent (e.g. the book is part of a main series but it's also in some kind of "best of genre" collection) it becomes more difficult. Again, a custom column for a secondary series could work, but only if the book only shows up in one of these collections. If you need more than that, perhaps the Reading List plugin could help.

Take a look at grouped search terms (preferences -> searching). These allow you to create virtual columns that contain the union of the values in the underlying columns.

The idea: assuming that the series are not hierarchical, create 2 or more series columns. Use these columns to assign all the necessary series to a book. It would be best to be consistent, using the same column for a given series. Now create a grouped search term that "contains" all the series columns. Use this term for searching, and calibre will automatically search across all the underlying columns. "Make user categories" for the grouped search term if you want to be able to search the term from the tag browser.

[Little_bear]

Thank you very much to all of you. In most of the cases the series are not hierarchical. I don't know why I didn't think to create custom columns (since I already use them for other statistics).

[fidvo]

Originally Posted by chaley

Take a look at grouped search terms (preferences -> searching). These allow you to create virtual columns that contain the union of the values in the underlying columns.

The idea: assuming that the series are not hierarchical, create 2 or more series columns. Use these columns to assign all the necessary series to a book. It would be best to be consistent, using the same column for a given series. Now create a grouped search term that "contains" all the series columns. Use this term for searching, and calibre will automatically search across all the underlying columns. "Make user categories" for the grouped search term if you want to be able to search the term from the tag browser.

That's a good point, but it doesn't get around the inconvenience of needing to set up a separate custom column for every collection. Calibre doesn't have a built-in method of assigning a book to an arbitrary number of series. That's why I mentioned the Reading List plugin. Although I don't use it myself, I believe it allows you to add books to any number of lists.

Another option if you don't care about the order of a book in a particular collection, is to set up a single tag-style column to list the collections that a book is part of.