Maintaining Separate Established Libraries

[Snauzoo]

Background: I had a small library on my laptop that I am slowly learning how to maintain. It has about 500 books, so to gain space on my tiny drive, I moved it to a external drive, which, on my system is F:\ Making the library path in Calibre F:\Calibre Library. All is working fine. Do not wish to alter this library at all.

Now, my husband's library, with metdata.db etc. is intact on another external drive. I would like to be able to open it with Calibre and clean up his disastrous spelling and indexing for him. I feel confident enough now with Calibre that I can do this. (He has some authors in there three times spelled three different ways. Do not even ask me what I think of his iTunes music mess.) There are a lot of duplicates and mine are better tagged etc. I just want to leave his on what would be G:\ if I open that library from Calibre.

I do not want to combine the two libraries. So, in Calibre, I clicked on the Library Icon, and selected Switch/Create. It appears that IF an alternative library exists, I can switch to it but the syntax of the sentence choice confuses me:

Does Use Existing Library at the New Location
mean use the library that already exists at this new location that I entered in the path to it, or does it mean, use my original library at the new location?

If I assume it means the former it would be helpful if the choice on the radio button said something more robust, like, do you have another library that you want to open? And if so where is it? And do you want to leave your existing library alone and just switch to the new one?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Snauzoo

Background: I had a small library on my laptop that I am slowly learning how to maintain. It has about 500 books, so to gain space on my tiny drive, I moved it to a external drive, which, on my system is F:\ Making the library path in Calibre F:\Calibre Library. All is working fine. Do not wish to alter this library at all.

Now, my husband's library, with metdata.db etc. is intact on another external drive. I would like to be able to open it with Calibre and clean up his disastrous spelling and indexing for him. I feel confident enough now with Calibre that I can do this. (He has some authors in there three times spelled three different ways. Do not even ask me what I think of his iTunes music mess.) There are a lot of duplicates and mine are better tagged etc. I just want to leave his on what would be G:\ if I open that library from Calibre.

I do not want to combine the two libraries. So, in Calibre, I clicked on the Library Icon, and selected Switch/Create. It appears that IF an alternative library exists, I can switch to it but the syntax of the sentence choice confuses me:

Does Use Existing Library at the New Location
mean use the library that already exists at this new location that I entered in the path to it, or does it mean, use my original library at the new location?

If I assume it means the former it would be helpful if the choice on the radio button said something more robust, like, do you have another library that you want to open? And if so where is it? And do you want to leave your existing library alone and just switch to the new one?

NO That means MOVE your Library Location

You want Create/Switch (the first time) to USE a different Library.
Make sure the 2 Libraries have Unique Names to avoid confusion. (Use the Rename Library Option as needed)

After the first use, you will see the Library name appear on the menu to allow a 'Speed Switch'

[Snauzoo]

Okay, I did it and it works. Following your caveat, I made a back up copy of my original library on F: drive. Then, I started up Calibre and clicked on HELP (novel concept, eh) and read the notes and comments about doing this in the help area. It was fairly clear that this is indeed possible, so I went ahead and did it. Used these instructions from gui.txt

Library
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
.. |lii| image:: images/library.png
:class: float-right-img

|lii| The :guilabel: `Library` action allows you to create, switch between, rename or delete a Library. |app| allows you to create as many libraries as you wish. You could for instance create a fiction library, a non fiction library, a foreign language library a project library, basically any structure that suits your needs. Libraries are the highest organizational structure within |app|, each library has its own set of books, tags, categories and base storage location.

1. **Switch\Create library..**: This action allows you to; a) connect to a pre-existing |app| library at another location from your currently open library, b) Create and empty library at a nw location or, c) Move the current Library to a newly specified location.
2. **Quick Switch>**: This action allows you to switch between libraries that have been registered or created within |app|.
3. **Rename Library>**: This action allows you to rename a Library.
4. **Delete Library>**: This action allows you to **permanenetly delete** a Library.
5. **<calibre library>**: Actions 5, 6 etc .. give you immediate switch access between multiple Libraries that you have created or attached to.

Just to be clear, there are two tasks to do in the dialog. The first is to tell Calibre the path. In my case it is G:\George's Library (that is what he named it with windows on the old computer so I am leaving that name for simplicity sake.)

Second task is to choose one of three radio button options:

1 - use existing library at new location
2 - create empty at new location
3 - move current to new location

I chose the first one, and it worked flawlessly. Now to clean up the mess :P

[Meresya]

Thanks for the detailed write-up Snauzoo. I have used Calibre now for a year, only to read books. I got ahold of three different libraries, two updating the third. Finally I decided to get rid of books that I have no interest in ever reading. However, with three different libraries it is going to be a daunting task, one I haven't fully gotten the energy to tackle. Your write-up will make the task a whole lot easier.

You have my sympathy regarding the mess of your husband's library, and specifically his Itunes disaster. I have had an IPod and IPhone now for about a year and a half. I barely used any space on my 32gig IPod 3GS. About six months ago I finally decided to create an ITunes library of all my CDs and misc music, so I know how much energy it takes to crate one that is organized to begin with, let alone having to organize one that is in a state of disaster. <giggle>

[lousignolo]

Originally Posted by Snauzoo

(...)

Does Use Existing Library at the New Location
mean use the library that already exists at this new location that I entered in the path to it, or does it mean, use my original library at the new location?

(...)

I had a similar problem a few days ago, without any possibility to ask in the forum. Si I tried to make a copy of my library and to open the copy. Then I saw that there had been no disaster with the copy and now I'm no more afraid