Quote:
Originally Posted by CWatkinsNash
Taking into account that all but one of these libraries will have at least some (and in one case, many) duplicates in one or more of the other libraries, can any of you give me some ideas on how best to proceed? I'm certainly not a new user, and normally I have no problem with this stuff but my allergies are fogging my brain and I can't seem to think my way through it.
|
Whenever I want to merge libraries, for sanity sake, I often copy my best library to a new library. So I would copy my "Main Library" to "Merge Library." Once this is done I would do two things:
1. Go to Preferences - Adding books and under Tags to apply when adding a book I would put a tag representing the library I was about to copy to the "Merge Library" so if I was copying the "ePub" library I would set the tag 000ePub.
2. Still in the adding books area of preferences I would check the Automerge added books and set the option to Ignore duplicate incoming formats.
So if I was adding ePubs to a mobi library if the books are detected as the same the epub would be added to the record that already contains the mobi. If there wasn't already a record that matched, a new book record will be created and the tag 000ePub would be there to let you know where it came from. The tag can be removed easily via the edit metadata window in bulk at any time, but while I'm cleaning things up it helps me to know which library the book started in and the 000 is there to ensure it is the first tag in the list so you can spot it easier in the list view.
I would do the above for each library. When finished I would use the Find Duplicates plugin to help narrow the field in my "Merge Library". When I was happy with the results I would archive my old "Main Library" and rename the new library accordingly. I would then use saved searches and the restricted library feature to easily replicate any need I thought I still had for duplicate libraries.