Calibre Shelf Management

[Larla]

I have read through the sticky several times but I still don't completely understand all the pieces required.

I want a series of shelves to be created based solely on the Author's name. So I have these questions:

1) Do I need to create a custom column such as myshelves in the example? If so, why? How is it actually used?
2) Do I have to edit the metadata of all my 600 books to specify the shelf name (as stated in the example)?
3) If I am using the Author as shelf name can't I just specify that somehow as a one-time relationship?

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

[davidfor]

You can put almost any column into the collections column field. It is a comma separated list of column names. I currently have it set to:

#kobobookshelves, #readstatus, #status, series

"#readstatus" and "#status" are custom columns I populate with the status such as "toRead", "Reading" and "Finished" along with a couple of other things. The two columns exist because I have different libraries and the names are inconsistent.

"series" is the series name, so it creates a collection for each series in the library.

"#kobobookshelves" is a custom columns I populate with whatever other collection name I want. I don't set this for all books, just the ones I want in some special collection.

You can have a complicated set like I do, or a single column such as "author" if all you want is a collection for each author.

[oren64]

When you send books as "author", make sure the author name on all the books is the same (no typo or FN LN\LN, FN discrepancy) to prevent extra shelves

3) If I am using the Author as shelf name can't I just specify that somehow as a one-time relationship?

Yes by changing the setting to "Manual management" in "Sending books to devices" but i recommend using the Auto management.

[Larla]

Ah -- it is getting clearer. So you can have a list off columns in the collections field and any non-blank columns will specify the collection this book gets put in.

That is cool. Gives you a lot of flexibility.

Thanks.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Larla

Ah -- it is getting clearer. So you can have a list off columns in the collections field and any non-blank columns will specify the collection this book gets put in.

That is cool. Gives you a lot of flexibility.

The books can be in multiple collections. So it is all values for the columns for each book.

And yes, it is very flexible.

[Larla]

Well my Glo HD arrived last night and I tried a quick test to see if I had Calibre set up correctly. My goal was to copy two books from same author to device while converting them to kepub and putting both in a collection named after the author.

50% success. They got copied over and converted to kepubs but no collection was created.

Here is basically what I did:

1) Disabled the Kobo Device Interface and Kobo Touch plugins
2)Installed and enabled the Kobo TouchExtended plugin
3) In the TouchExtended plugin specified Author in the Collections Column
4) Also checked Create Collections and Delete Empty Collections
5) When that setup didn't create a collection I changed column name to Author(s) but that didn't work either

Any ideas what I have missed?

[Larla]

Well I kept trying stuff and finally got it to work. The main changes I made were:

1) Enabled Kobo Device Interface plugin
2) Changed the collection column to be authors

Not sure if the 1st change was necessary but I definitely had to have authors as the column name.

[Larla]

OK -- next problem. I am now successfully creating collections by author but when I go to collection view (any way to make that the default library view??) it is sorting by collection name which ends up sorting by first name of the author.

In book view, sorting by author obviously sorts using the author sort metadata and all works fine. Can I somehow do that with my collection name??

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Larla

Well I kept trying stuff and finally got it to work. The main changes I made were:

1) Enabled Kobo Device Interface plugin
2) Changed the collection column to be authors

Not sure if the 1st change was necessary but I definitely had to have authors as the column name.

It was the second as the case if the column name is important. But, enabling the Kobo Device interface plugin won't harm. This is for the older Kobo devices and won't be used for the Glo HD.

Originally Posted by Larla

OK -- next problem. I am now successfully creating collections by author but when I go to collection view (any way to make that the default library view??) it is sorting by collection name which ends up sorting by first name of the author.

In book view, sorting by author obviously sorts using the author sort metadata and all works fine. Can I somehow do that with my collection name??

Not on the device. The device has no way of knowing that the collections are actually author names and should be sorted as names. To achieve this, you would have to create collections using the "author sort". To do this, create a custom column with the type "Column built from other columns" and as the template use {author_sort}. Then use this column for the collections column.

[oren64]

You can sort collections by name, number of books and date.

If you want the collections will sort by family name you need to change the author name to LN, FN before sending the books to the device.

You can use this plugin to swap FN LN to LN, FN.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=125428

Edit: I didn't see davidfor reply, is solution is better than mine.

[Larla]

davidfor -- thanks -- exactly what I was looking for and it worked perfectly.