12-06-2006, 05:34 PM | #1 |
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Looking for an E-book Indexing / Inventory / Cataloging Program
My hard disk e-book files are a mess (so it is a lot like my mind) and it is hard to keep track of what I have and where I have it. There are versions of books in multiple formats – some still in PDB from the days of Palm, some in MOBI which was an upgrade in readability and usage for the Palm, tons in PDF from work and on-screen viewing, HTML files galore, more in TXT and DOC, newer stuff in RTF for the Reader, a smattering from morebooks.net in LRF, and some protected BBeB stuff from CONNECT. There are also some LIT, CHM, and RB formats floating around.
Some are in states of conversion from one format to another to get to RTF for the Reader and many more in the format I found them in. Some are even in ZIP or RAR compressed format. Now I have a lot of tools from Amber ABC for conversion so that is not the problem. The problem is keeping everything straight. Is there a good indexing / inventory / cataloging program out there that will allow me to work on these files that is any better than Windows Explorer? |
12-07-2006, 09:39 AM | #2 |
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If you find one, let me know cause I have the same problem. I have a lot sorted by aurthor and a lot sorted by genre. I also collect a lot of articles and policy papers and those are a mess, not to mention all the different file formats.
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12-07-2006, 01:13 PM | #3 | |
Books and more books
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Quote:
Personally I use Google desktop which is very fast in finding stuff on your pc, and you can search exactly as in regular Google, beats Windows Explorer by a lot. There is free book catalogue software around (I tried one but forgot its name), but I did not find it useful. http://desktop.google.com/?utm_sourc...tm_campaign=en |
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12-07-2006, 01:32 PM | #4 |
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I was thinking about creating a software like that...
I think the challenge in creating a piece of SW like that is discovering meta data.
When you load a bunch of mp3-s to iTunes it can figure out the artist, songname etc. and immediatelly gives you an organised catalog. Now how're you going to do that with all these different eBook formats? That's the big question. |
12-07-2006, 03:44 PM | #5 |
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One could probably write a Google Desktop Search plugin or a Windows Desktop Search IFilter to extract the metadata.
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12-07-2006, 03:58 PM | #6 |
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This is why I would have loved Apple and iTunes to join the ranks of ebook readers. Add a file and all its content is cataloged. Usually music has id3 tags I wonder if something similar could exist for books?
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12-07-2006, 04:35 PM | #7 |
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I don't want a program to search for ebooks, I want to be able to sort them according to author, genre, file type, name, and date added. I have so many books and being able to organize them better would save me a lot of time.
PS. If it did comics too that would be icing. |
12-07-2006, 04:40 PM | #8 |
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I know that RTF, DOC, and PDF have property tags that can be used for this (as the Sony Reader does.) BBeB and LRF files also seem to have these. Their use by third party content suppliers are often suspect. This may be a starting point.
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12-07-2006, 04:47 PM | #9 |
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HTML and TXT are the most problematic.
but then again... what would a human do? start looking into the file and near the top you'd find: author... Title... We could probably come up with a not too AI program that would try to do some pattern matching to figure out basic metadata After that all is needed to throw them into a table, that's not a big deal. |
12-08-2006, 10:45 AM | #10 |
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HTML should be tagged in a specific way ( <META> ), but for TXT files there is no standard way. Or am I wrong?
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12-08-2006, 05:43 PM | #11 |
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I suggest we collect code libraries that give you an API to extract metadata from various formats.
wvware at http://wvware.sourceforge.net/ should be one for MS Office Word format. |
12-14-2006, 06:14 PM | #12 |
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This is the best and only ebook sorter that i am aware of
http://www.geocities.com/vangelis_df...ookSorter.html |
01-07-2007, 04:53 PM | #13 |
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Since I ran out of space on my HD, I keep most of my media files - ebooks, audio books, music - on DVDs. Soon enough it proved impossible to find anything, so I wrote a script that scans a DVD (or CD, or HD directory), and throws all the file names and paths in a MySQL database. Now I can search it with SQL for whatever, and get the exact location where the file is saved.
Metadata isn't included, but reading this thread I realize that it's important and I should add support for it. I'm also in the process of writing a web application (with Rails) that'll give me a nice interface to search with, instead of raw SQL. It'll have the added benefit of my media library index being accessible from wherever I am, and by friends and family as well, so they can ask me to burn them files they like. Anyway, this is all rather geeky and definitely not ready for prime time. I'm wondering though whether there's interest in such a tool so I'll put more time into it. |
01-08-2007, 11:59 AM | #14 |
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has anyone taken at look at AskSam?
I heard it was good but I've never used it. http://www.asksam.com/default.asp |
01-09-2007, 12:47 AM | #15 |
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Hehe, glad I checked this forum, was just getting ready to do a search to see if I could find any feedback on exactly this same problem.
Previous to my new Reader, I read the occasional ebook on my PDA and then on my SmartPhone, but I never had much of a collection, so organization wasn't much of an issue. Now, I've been finding and collecting tons of books, from various places, in various formats and stages of conversion. Looking at the tangled mess on my poor laptop, I decided to move everything to the desktop and only keep a nice handful on the laptop (which is where Connect is installed). While I've quickly come to realize that I'm not likely going to read every single book in my new library, and technically I could just redownload what I need and delete what has already been read, I just can't bring myself to do it. I'd rather convert/reformat the books I come across and have them ready to go when the urge hits me; besides, I'm the type that can never remember stuff I want to read when the time comes to decide, so keeping a library which I can easily browse will just make me happy. Anyway, getting on with the point: @Dopedangel, does that program support indexing, etc. across network? @Kosst Amojan, AskSam looks interesting. After spending a good couple of hours trying to comb through Google results, I don't know how I missed this one. Did you install the trial? I'd be interested in some feedback on AskSam as well. Anybody else have suggestions? I'd like to get started while my collection is still somewhat manageable. |
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