Changing the Library Structure?

[Logan06]

By default the structure for the Calibre library is...

Author/book(##)/Title - Author.

I would like to know how to change this to

Author/Book/Author - Title.

Please note what I am talking about is the structure of the Calibre library, NOT the Save to Disk format.

Where do I change the structure for the library itself?

Thanks!
Logan

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Logan06

By default the structure for the Calibre library is...

Author/book(##)/Title - Author.

I would like to know how to change this to

Author/Book/Author - Title.

Please note what I am talking about is the structure of the Calibre library, NOT the Save to Disk format.

Where do I change the structure for the library itself?

Thanks!
Logan

Moderator Notice
Please read sticky 2 under Library Maintenance sub-forum

[Manichean]

Moderator Notice
Also, moved to said forum, please use the appropriate subforums.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Logan06

Where do I change the structure for the library itself?

You don't.

I have a question of my own: why would you want to?

[Logan06]

I dont like the books listed by title - author, I would rather have them by author - title. It's an OCD thing I guess.

[Logan06]

P.S. Thank you to the moderator for moving my posting and sorry about that.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Logan06

I dont like the books listed by title - author, I would rather have them by author - title. It's an OCD thing I guess.

Seriously, read the sticky mentioned. You should regard the library folder as a black box of magic and only interface with it using Calibre's interfaces (either the GUI or the command line). You could seriously mess things up otherwise.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by Logan06

I dont like the books listed by title - author, I would rather have them by author - title. It's an OCD thing I guess.

Read Manichean's post about reading the sticky.

Where would you put Shadow of the Lion, which is a collaboration between Flint, Freer, and Lackey? Under one author's name? A different one? A special folder for all three? That's the problem with trying to use the filesystem for metadata: it's inflexible. You can't file Shadow of the Lion under both Lackey and Flint, for instance; you have to pick one or the other, or maybe Freer. And if you set up a folder for all three, it wouldn't be in the same folder as Take a Thief, which is by Lackey alone. Filesystems are not meant to be used for metadata, not to the extent that you need for organizing a library, anyway. For that you need, well, real metadata.

The cool thing about calibre is you can organize the books any way you want to in the calibre GUI. That's the whole point. If you want them sorted by author, by title, by genre, by your personal tags, whatever you can imagine, the calibre interface will do that for you. Shadow of the Lion can be found if you click on Lackey, Flint, Freer, or whatever else you've tagged it with -- fantasy, historical, and Venice, perhaps. Maybe to-be-read, or finished, or anything else you want. You can't do any of that by trying to force the computer's filesystem to supply your metadata, and what little you can make it do is so painfully limited.

With calibre, you're organizing books, not files. Never mind what calibre does "under the hood" with its files; they don't matter to you any more than the blocks and sectors that make up a computer file matter when you're looking at it with Notepad. Calibre deals with books, and those books come in (or can be converted to) formats. Anything you want to do with them -- read them, transfer them to your reader, send them off to a friend, sort them in any possible order, etc. -- you can do with calibre.

Really, read the sticky. That explains it. So does my .sig: let calibre do what it's best at, and don't try to circumvent it; that works about as well as deciding you're going to ignore the filesystem entirely and do physical access to your hard drive. My boss bricked the company mainframe that way once, back in the day. Good thing it was him, not me.

[Logan06]

Ok Ok I'll read the sticky!!!

Thanks guys, I'm new to this and just trying to figure out how things work. The application is wonderful and I've been experimenting with different ways to use it. I have several collections of e type publications, everything from magazines to comics, tech manuals to company documents.

I promise I will not mess with the black box of Calibre though!

And thank you for leading this blind son through the forum forest.

Your (now humbled) Calibre user
Steven

[Logan06]

P.S. Just for clarification the reason I wanted to do this was that I was looking at ways to organize the library so others would not have to use Calibre to view the document library. As an IT professional it's my job to provide solutions for my users, not just the select few that can think for themselves. And there are users on my network who would like view the documents in the library but not not have the, lets say "user capacity" to learn a new application. And yes I understand that I can use "Save to Disk" to organize the library just about any way I want. While this is a solution for users, it takes up extra space on the server.

[Manichean]

Originally Posted by Logan06

P.S. Just for clarification the reason I wanted to do this was that I was looking at ways to organize the library so others would not have to use Calibre to view the document library.

Have a look at the content server if you're sharing via network. That might do the trick for you. If not, check out Calibre2OPDS.

[Worldwalker]

The amount of space ebooks take up is generally negligible. The complete works of Shakespeare, in epub format, are 2.2 MB on Project Gutenberg. That's about the size of a picture from my digital camera. I think my whole library of a couple of thousand ebooks takes up less than half of a 4 GB chip. Space really isn't an issue.

As for getting books conveniently to your users, follow Manichean's advice (always a good idea anyway) and check out the calibre content server.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by Logan06

And there are users on my network who would like view the documents in the library but not not have the, lets say "user capacity" to learn a new application.

I provide a similar service to users who need access to a library of content stored in Calibre. I use the Calibre content server. It provides a web page with a search box at the top. I tell users to type any words into that box that are part of author, title and/or book series. They can also try character names, genre, etc. The search looks for those words in all database fields. This seems to be sufficient for them to find anything they want.

A few more adventurous users have learned how to search in specific fields.

The main server screen also lets them explore these organized branches, some being very custom and specific, such as saved searches for the newest items in a certain field.

Choose a category to browse by:

* Newest
* All books
* Authors
* Awards (Literary prizes)
* ISBN
* News
* Publishers
* Ratings
* Searches (Saved searches they have requested)
* Series
* Tags

[Logan06]

Just wanted to thank all that posted. Thanks for the info on the content server. this was just what i was looking for.