Default Directories

[goldberry]

I have been using Calibre for a while and it does everything I need in moving books to our reader(s). We now have 3, a kindle, Nookcolor, and our original Sony touch.

I would like to keep a central directory where we can collect all books that we have and get but have seperate directories for my ebooks and my wife's ebooks.

One simple method would be to use 2 sets of Calibre software but am not sure whether that is possible on one PC. Maybe someone can comment on that?

The other thing I would like to do is add books from the central collection to calibre which then places them in our individual libraries. Is it possible when adding a book to specify a different directory to save it to?

example: add book from central directory which then gets placed in either my or my wife's directory

[Manichean]

I don't know if this is what you want, but have you tried multiple libraries?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by goldberry

I have been using Calibre for a while and it does everything I need in moving books to our reader(s). We now have 3, a kindle, Nookcolor, and our original Sony touch.

I would like to keep a central directory where we can collect all books that we have and get but have seperate directories for my ebooks and my wife's ebooks.

One simple method would be to use 2 sets of Calibre software but am not sure whether that is possible on one PC. Maybe someone can comment on that?

The other thing I would like to do is add books from the central collection to calibre which then places them in our individual libraries. Is it possible when adding a book to specify a different directory to save it to?

example: add book from central directory which then gets placed in either my or my wife's directory

The term you are looking for is "Library"
The little arrow next to the Icon: Switch/Create

Specify a "new" (Libraries can not overlap/contain another Library. Only independent of each other) ) location for the Create phase.

Your other choice is to create an "Owner" Tag or custom column

The third choice that comes to mind (NOT TESTED. user switching disabled on my system) is if users have separate Logon profiles on the machine: Is to logon as a different user (Calibre stores configuration settings per user) for user-unique control of the user selectable features.

I am guessing that Logoff of the other user would be required so as to NOT mess up device connection (No Fast User Switching allowed) and detection.

Kovid can confirm

[user_none]

You have to options. Use two libraries or use one library and tag the books as his or hers and filter based on who's looking at it.

If you use two libraries then books in 1 will not appear in 2. If you have books in 1 that you put in 2 the metadata will not be synced between them. If you have very different reading taste than your wife two libraries will work fine.

You can create a second library and switch between them by clicking the books icon in the toolbar.

If you decide you want to keep everything together in one library just add a tag for your books (his) and a tag for her books (hers). Then you in the search area put tag:"his", in the saved search box to the right put His and click the green plus sign to the far right. This will create a saved search you can use later to see books tagged as his later. You can also use the restriction on the far left to only show these books but still be able to search them. Do the same for the hers tag.

[goldberry]

Thanks for the input, guys

Set up a separate library for myself. Curious about something and wonder if it is a default. I couldn't set up the library until the folder I wanted to use was empty,so fine i moved my books temporarily and set the folder. Then I moved the books back. My Nookcolor was attached to the PC and Calibre immediately placed the books on my Nook. I would have thought I needed to highlight my selections and move them to my Nook

[theducks]

Originally Posted by goldberry

Thanks for the input, guys

Set up a separate library for myself. Curious about something and wonder if it is a default. I couldn't set up the library until the folder I wanted to use was empty,so fine i moved my books temporarily and set the folder. Then I moved the books back. My Nookcolor was attached to the PC and Calibre immediately placed the books on my Nook. I would have thought I needed to highlight my selections and move them to my Nook

Calibre does not do things if you don't tell it to do them.
Could you have something else running on the Nook or PC that would do the 'sync'

BTW News is a edge case. You can set a schedule to auto-send News to a attached device (Still, you had to make a schedule and tic the box)

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by goldberry

I couldn't set up the library until the folder I wanted to use was empty,so fine i moved my books temporarily and set the folder. Then I moved the books back.

Calibre wants the library folders to be managed only by itself, that's why library folders have to be empty. I'm curious, by "moved the books back", do you mean "added them to the library via Calibre" or "copied them into the folder Calibre uses as a library"? If the latter, that's a bad idea- you shouldn't manually mess around in Calibre's library folder- it won't know about files you copy there, and you can break things badly.

[goldberry]

Originally Posted by Manichean

Calibre wants the library folders to be managed only by itself, that's why library folders have to be empty. I'm curious, by "moved the books back", do you mean "added them to the library via Calibre" or "copied them into the folder Calibre uses as a library"? If the latter, that's a bad idea- you shouldn't manually mess around in Calibre's library folder- it won't know about files you copy there, and you can break things badly.

I moved them manually into the folder that I had requested Calibre use as the library, It was my intention to then go into Calibre and use the add books but when I switched to Calibre (open in PC all this time) the books were listed and I noticed that it showed them as also in my NC.

I looked today and see that Calibre has created a metadata.db file in the folder so maybe everything will be okay as searchs pull up the correct book. I realize that Calibre does internal things when you add books and had intended to use the add books feature. Program seems very forgiving.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by goldberry

I moved them manually into the folder that I had requested Calibre use as the library, It was my intention to then go into Calibre and use the add books but when I switched to Calibre (open in PC all this time) the books were listed and I noticed that it showed them as also in my NC.

You probably had a metadata.db together with the folders, that way, Calibre had a finished library it could access. If you copy books into the library folder manually, they'll just be there and Calibre won't know about them. If you copy books into the place Calibre would copy them to when adding to the library and then go on to add them to the library, odd things may happen (a similar process used to result in 0 byte files).
At this point, I'd strongly suggest doing a database check of all your libraries (see the library dropdown menu, the maintenance submenu is what you want)- with all that manual copying going on, you can't be sure that you haven't got extra books lying around that are not part of a library, but are in the same folder.