Copying Sony collections to calibre tags

[Faryn]

I apologize if this has been asked before. I've been searching for quite a while without luck. I probably just don't know what I'm looking for, exactly.

Okay, here we go:

- I have a Sony ereader. I have organized the ebooks on that ereader into dozens of Collections.
- I have tags enabled on Calibre. Obviously, they do not match the collections on my ereader. I end up with dozens of different variations on "sci-fi" or whatever.
- When I add a book from my library to the ereader, calibre takes the tag data from the ebook file on my computer and makes that the collection on the ereader... which I then change on the ereader. Again, if I didn't, I'd have fifty different collections called "Science Fiction" "scifi" "sci-fi" etc.
- I am looking to do the reverse: copy the ebooks from my ereader to my computer library, and have the collection data show up as a tag.
- The reasoning is simple: if my current Sony ereader dies, I want to be able to buy a new one, transfer my library onto it, and not have to enter collection data for everything on the new ereader. I'd like Calibre to have that info already.


How do I go about this, short of entering the data in one book at a time?

To be clear, I am looking for a way to mass copy collection data from the ereader to the calibre library on my computer. I am more than happy to delete my entire computer library and re-copy all of the books back to it from the ereader, if that's what it takes. I just don't know how to get calibre to look at the collection data on the reader, and then enter that info as tag data when the files get copied onto the computer.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Sabardeyn]

The following answer is the reverse of what you've asked for but it might be of use to help clean up your library. The directions are to manage tags in your library - correcting multiple "sci-fi" situations.

Open the Tag Browser (luggage tag icon at lower right of Calibre screen).
Alter Tag Browser (above currently running Calibre version #, bottom left).
Manage authors, tags, etc.
Manage Tags
The Category Editor (Tags) window will open.

Now you've got a list of every tag that is currently in your database. You can edit any or all of them as you see fit. To do so you need to highlight a tag in the first column, press the "blue i" button to edit the selected tag. Change the term to whatever you prefer and press enter. Calibre will change the various book records and return control back to you when completed. You can merge tags by giving them the same exact term. Rinse and repeat as needed.

If your library includes metadata downloads it is possible you are going to encounter lots of alternate spellings or phrasing of the same tag/term. I would suggest looking through every tag in your library. Although this might entail a lot of work, it will certainly clean up your library and increase responsiveness (less cpu cycles to process the decreased data load).

You might want to consider how you're going to deal with naming conventions and complex tags before you start this project. For instance a tag like "Fiction - General (Fantasy)". I opted with "Fiction", "General", "Fantasy". Naming affects Searches; for instance do you search for "Dwarf" or "Dwarves" (note the spelling change will cause different search results). I opted to use terms based on plural word forms - so my library has "Dwarves" even if there is only one dwarf in the entire story. Maybe you would rather have both singular and plural. Dates and numbers will also be an issue.

After you've got the tag situation resolved, you should be able to do some tag related searches and add the name of the Sony collection(s) to the appropriate books. Thereafter things should be in sync.


I'm sure that there are other ways to do this - and I'm just as sure that someone else will chime in.

[Faryn]

Thanks, Sab, but that info (as you say) is for the reverse of my problem. I need to find a way to impose the collection data onto the tags. I assume that there's a way, I just don't know how. Otherwise, I'm resigned to entering the tag data one book at a time.

I even tried deleting a book from the library, and copying it over from the ereader. No luck; the collection info didn't transfer over to the tag. Unfortunately, the file, when copied from the ereader to calibre on my pc, did seem to have the tags on them. Ugh.

I did go and clear all of the tags on the pc. That was easy, because calibre allows me to do that en masse through "edit metadata in bulk". Once I find out how to impose the collections in one fell swoop, I can sort out future additions myself by simply editing the tags to match the appropriate ereader collection.

[chaley]

To my knowledge there is no way to move collection information from the device to calibre. I know that there wasn't a way two years ago when I worked on the Sony drivers, and I don't see anything that would have changed that state of affairs.

Calibre's philosophy was (and I think is) that either it manages collections completely, deleting any collections that it doesn't know about (automatic managment); or it adds the collections you specify to whatever is there, deleting nothing (manual management). There was (is) no provision to map collections unknown to calibre back to some calibre metadata field (it isn't always tags).

[Faryn]

Dang... Well, manual re-write it is. Sigh.

Thanks for the input, Chaley. Much appreciated.

[Faryn]

Well, that problem is fixed... in that I wiped the tags off the ebooks on my computer, and manually added the proper tags that I wanted. Then I deleted everything off my ereader. When I copied everything back over to the ereader, those new tags took hold as collections. But hey, that didn't take too long. It was only 1500+ books.

Now I just have to modify the tags on new books as I get them.