PRS-T1 Two questions on Collections in the PRS-T1

[Berzelius]

Mrs B will soon be ordering numerous books for her PRS-T1 and it seems that I have been appointed librarian/technical consultant. Obviously the way forward is to set up a number of Collections but there are a couple of points that I'm not certain about.

1) As more books are put on the eReader there needs to be some way of spotting any new books so that they can be moved to the appropriate collection. This is very easy on my Kindle 4. If you set it to the Collection view then only books that are not in collections are shown on the home pages - this makes recently downloaded books stick out like a sore thumb. Is there something similar on the PRS-T1? I know that new books will be marked new, but this tag disappears if you open the books for any reason. I suppose you could set the book sort order to sort by date so that the most recent books are at the top of the list but this will not help with older books that you remove from one collection before moving them to another collection (for example, moving them to a Read Books collection). So, any suggestions on how to deal with this problem?

2) The eReader seems to make it's own decisions about automatically creating Collections and putting books in them. So far it has created Amazon (I've a few Amazon books converted to epub), Romance (Mrs B's main genre) and New Books without bothering to ask me if I want them. How do I stop the eReader from doing this?

[Blue2u]

I don't use the Sony Collections feature but maybe try searching the forum or wiki? Personally I use Calibre to manage and tag my library and sort it into the collections I want [ie series, TBR, etc.] Good luck and if nothing else a small bump to push your question up the line.

[foghat]

You can sort by date added. So that should get you where you need to be.

I'd use calibre to manage your series. Of course this requires removing the drm. Any series you create in calibre will automagically show up in your collection section on the t1.

[redneck eyeball]

Originally Posted by Berzelius

This is very easy on my Kindle 4. If you set it to the Collection view then only books that are not in collections are shown on the home pages - this makes recently downloaded books stick out like a sore thumb. Is there something similar on the PRS-T1

This is how it works on the T2, the T1 is a nightmare when it comes to collections.

I'm very pleased with my T2, hopefully Sony will release a firmware update for the T1 so that I can have the same software on both devices.

[bla]

I have never had a problem... just sort your books list by date... that way the added books will listed first.. you can then easily open your collection(s) and add them... I do agree that collections are not very well implemented on the T1 but it's not a huge deal, you can also use calibre to organize your collections external to the device

[filmo]

With books on T1 displayed as list without covers, I can change way books are sorted and have new sort displayed in seconds. So fast I don't hesitate to change the way my more than 2000 books are sorted. I like this reader so much I gifted one to each of my sisters set up my way with large library of books. They now love T1 reader for reading over their tablets. T1 is not perfect and neither am I or anything or anybody.

[JSWolf]

The easiest way to manage collection is to use Calibre to manage your eBooks. With Calibre, you can put in tags and series information and the collections will get created for you and the books put into the proper collections. It's very easy.

I suggest you have a read over in the Calibre section and ask any Calibre related questions there.

[Berzelius]

Thanks for the replies.

1) I get the general impression that that my best bet is going to be to stick to sort by date on the PRS-T1 and then move books manually into collections.

2) I myself use Calibre a lot, tags and all - in fact I'm also using it at the moment to transfer onto the PRS-T1 a few books that I've downloaded from Amazon and converted to ePub. However, the chances of getting Mrs B to even take an interest in, let alone use, Calibre are well below zero. Also, I'm not sure how willing she would be to use the sort function on the PRS-T1. It essentially has to be Collections if I want a peaceful life!

3) I note with interest the following comment by foghat:
Any series you create in calibre will automagically show up in your collection section on the t1.
Could you amplify on this - by series I assume you mean the Series metadata in Calibre. I've got the Kindle Collections Manager plug-in on Calibre but I'd have thought that it works with the Kindle only.

4) I see that there are no comments on the PRS-T1 creating Collections of its own bat - is it just me who has this problem?

[Shopaholic]

Originally Posted by Berzelius

Thanks for the replies.

4) I see that there are no comments on the PRS-T1 creating Collections of its own bat - is it just me who has this problem?

I've never had it happen nor have I read about it happening. Are you saying you add a book to the reader via a download & it puts it into or makes it's own collection? How do you get the book onto the reader?

If you use the Sony software it does default to autosync which I hate with a passion. I've had it happen because of Calibre. Calibre put tags on a book that created a collection that I didn't want. I deleted the tags in Calibre and the collection on the reader. But the T1 on it's own doing that, no.

[AnotherCat]

Originally Posted by Berzelius

...3) I note with interest the following comment by foghat:
Any series you create in calibre will automagically show up in your collection section on the t1.
Could you amplify on this - by series I assume you mean the Series metadata in Calibre...

If, say, a book in Assimov's Foundation series is tagged "Science Fiction" and is Book 1 in series "Foundation Series" then, only if loaded to the T1 with Calibre (re "only if", that being my experience, someone correct me if I am wrong), it will automatically go into both the collection "Science Fiction", and the collection "Foundation Series" (creating the collections, if necessary). In the "Foundation Series" collection it will appear ordered correctly with the other books in that series.

[jackie_w]

@Berzelius,

If you have some time to spare this post I created a while ago may help you. It's long because it's very detailed. It will take you longer to read it than to do what's necessary to get Calibre and your Sony working as a well-oiled unit. Once it's done you can forget about it.

It covers using Calibre with various Sony models to

• create Sony Collections and order books within Collections
• include book series info such that it displays in all your Sony booklists, not just Collections.

If you do decide to get stuck in, please note that you must use Calibre to transfer books to your Sony, i.e. Send-to-Device or Save-to-disk, not a simple drag/drop from the operating system.

[Berzelius]

Thanks for the latest replies. I think I may now have the problem cracked.

Having now browsed through the Calibre manual again, I see what AnotherCat means. I now know that Calibre users tags etc to create collections. I've looked at the PRS-T1 plugin in Calibre and found it is set to uses tags and series. As I had tagged some of the books as Amazon this would explain why an Amazon collection was created.

I've created a separate Calibre library ready for Mrs B's books. As it's solely for this purpose I will be able to create individual tags for each set of books downloaded. Anyway, as a test, I added a few books to this library and tagged some as 'Temp 1' and some as 'Temp 2'. I then got Calibre to send them to the PRS-T1 and, lo and behold, there were 2 new Collections, called 'Temp 1' and 'Temp 2' with the appropriate books in each.

And thank you for your link jackie_w. I shall study it carefully to see if there is anything else I can learn.

I am forever being surprised at the new things that I find that Calibre can do. Obviously the best software both before and since sliced bread!