How does the Nook ST handle collections?

[BeccaPrice]

I don't know whether this belongs here or at the Calibre forum.

A friend of mine is thinking about a Nook ST. She'll mostly be side-loading books or getting them from the library, and managing her ebooks with Calibre.

I know how to do collections/shelves in a kindle, but I'm not sure how books are put into collections (shelves? folders?) on the Nook ST. Can you manage this via calibre?

I know that at one time side-loaded books were treated not as books but as "documents" and you couldn't organize them in shelves with books - is this still true?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

[Dopedangel]

Their is no automatic way to do it you have to manually put books in shelves and sometimes they get lost if you keep books on the sd card.
I personally prefer using folders instead by using calibre send to device. Btw if you or your friend are even slightly into tech and don't mind rooting and stuff. I would recommend rooting and installing coolreader for non drm ebooks. It is a lot better than the Nook internal reader you will still need to use the nook reader for Library books.

[frankelr]

You might want to know that shelf content stored on the micrsd card will be lost when you power a Nook ST off or update its software. To be very clear
the epubs will still be there, but the shelf will be empty. Since B&N only
has 256K of memory available for user content on the main memory chip, the
shelf feature is pretty much useless. Its only useful for B&N purchased content.

[6charlong]

You can probably get the Nook to display your books the way you seem to want with Calibre. It has several ways to display your library. The first time you turn it on it goes by default to the "Home" view which is more of a sales site. Not the best if you have more than a few books.

Press the "n" button and you get a menu across the bottom. From the choices listed touch "Library" and you get the Library view. It's default is to show "All" the books on the Nook, sorted by "Most Recent", "Title", or "Author".

Calibre nests books by organizing them in folders by author's name. If you like to organize your book collection by author the Nook will do it for you. Here's how.

From the Library screen touch the control called "All" (show all books). That opens a drop down menu with several alternative choices but for my example here choose "My Files".

On the My Files screen the default is to show the files on "Nook files" meaning those on the Nook. I'm assuming you want to use the SD card, which is better with this method anyway, so you tap the control called "Memory Card".

There are two views possible. One looks like a Rubix cube with 9 little boxes--that shows the folders and books as icons and it's the one you want for this demonstration. (The other gives you a long list of all the books on the SD card).

At first you just get some of Nook's housekeeping files with names like "driveinfo.calibre, and LOST.DIR. Leave those alone and touch the folder icon called "My Files".

Now you get icons for Books, Documents, Magazines and Newspapers. Let's keep this simple, you just want to keep books stored from your Calibre, so touch the icon called "Books".

Now you get the setup Calibre designed. For example, you see icons for Austen, Jane (6); Dickens, Charles (8); Twain, Mark (3), etc.

Touch "Austen, Jane (6)" and you get separate icons for each of the six Jane Austen books on your Nook. Touch one of them and it renders the book.

Once you set it to open to "My Files" like this it will go back to that starting place until you change it and when Calibre adds new authors, or adds books to the folder of authors you already have on your SD card, those books will show up inside that author's folder.

On my Nook it doesn't display the cover art for books in the "My Files" view and I've never troubled to try and find out if there's a way to get them.

__________

I forgot to mention. The SD card is just an SD card. You don't have to follow Calibre's organization entirely, you can make your own folders. For example, a folder called "Library Books" lets you drag and drop library books in there and they'll show up in your library that way.

___________

Apologies, one last caveat: DRM (how could I forget). My example shows only public domain authors but you can put books with DRM that you buy from any bookstore: Kobo, Books on Board, ebooks.com, Google, IndieBound, etc. Nook renders books with Adobe DRM too. Oddly, it's a little harder to get B&N books into this method of organization but it can be done. You have to install the Nook app on your computer, download the books through it, then drag-and-drop them onto the SD card in the right folder or, easier, copy them into Calibre and let it handle the organization.

[BeccaPrice]

all of which has convinced me that the Nook is not a reader for me. I'll pass this on to my friend, see whether these are issues for her, or whether she can live with this in order to get both buttons and touch menus. Thank you all for the information.

[susaz]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

all of which has convinced me that the Nook is not a reader for me. I'll pass this on to my friend, see whether these are issues for her, or whether she can live with this in order to get both buttons and touch menus. Thank you all for the information.

Sony T1 does handle collections by tags through Calibre. Just set the appropiate tag and once loaded on the T1 you´ll find your collections. One caveat: it´s slow to load. But it works pretty well! I hope the T2 comes with glowlight!!!

[Kymmmm]

I just open my SD card to view, make folders and drop/drag the books into the appropriate folders. Actually I have folders within folders so all my authors with surnames starting with A or B have their own folder and go in A-B folder and so forth. That's because I have so many books its easier to arrow down to the book or series I want. That's the easy way for me but may not suit all.

Kym

[NickyWithNook]

I don't think it really does much as far as collections go. Which is fine for me - I just search for the title I want - but if the ability to use collections is a major issue, I don't think the Nook is the best choice for your friend.