Thank you for those ideas, too, kiwidude. I didn't originally have the problem of importing a lot of eBooks lying around on my computers, because I was relatively new to wanting eBooks at all. When I got my first reading device (Kindle) - that changed and I became an eBook addict who'd much rather read something on a device than a paperbook, brought on in part because I was tired of relocating with lots of bookcases and book-weight.
Eventually I dumped nearly everything I found out there on the internet into a library for cleaning-up and then moved all clean formats to my main library. And I began bogging down in the metadata-updating and format-cleaning processes. As a fresh beginning calibre user I couldn't handle putting it all into the same library as "clean" books after the first week or two.
So I like your ideas.
Handling metadata and/or format clean-up in small groups by author makes a lot of sense and I'll "adopt" that into the KISS posts and my own workflow too. The #done column idea (or at least specific tags for "evaluated" and "cleaned", if not separate columns) makes sense to me too.
I'm still thinking about whether I'm better off using a "NeedsCleaning" library or just doing it all in one library. The past week I've been doing it all in one library. Pros and cons either way, but I still don't like mixing up unevaluated books with evaluated books, and evaluated still-need-cleaning books with cleaned books. Having evaluated and cleaned-if-necessary books in a separate library gives me warm feelings of security and accomplishment.
And I still plan to be much more discriminating about content and format quality that I download in the first place.
