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Originally Posted by bigpallooka
Does that mean there are more than those two sources (ISBNDB and Amazon) that are used to access meta-data or just that calibre uses 5 plug-ins to perform the search? Kovid mentioned that the search uses aggregators rather than directly accessing the websites but as I don't know what aggregators are I'm finding the whole issue a little perplexing which in turn makes it hard to ask the right questions when seeking assistance or requesting improvements.
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I spent a lot of time wandering around the code there and modifying it just to make sure I understood it. I needed that info to write the "don't overwrite author/title by default" option you see on the single metadata fetch dialog screen and in the Prefernces area.
I never really understood it 100%, and it's changed some, but as best I can recall, Calibre uses certain sources to find one or more matches to title or author, gets some metadata from those sources, then uses identifying info found at the first sites and goes to other sources to get additional social metadata/covers. The result of all that is what you see in the fetch metadata screen. Some lines listed come from source1, some from source2, and the final you get is the metadata on the selected line from the corresponding source plus metadata data retrieved from other sources based on the identifying info on the selected line.
The term "aggregator" just means Google Books, or Amazon or ISBNDB, etc. where this type of info is stored for lots of books.