Quote:
Originally Posted by cvlowe
If I set Calibre to sort by "series" then all my series are all sorted out of the 'authors' at the bottom of the book list. If I sort by author, then the Bolo series gets scattered all over the place.
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@cvlowe,
I don't follow this portion. Do you have a screen capture or can you list an example of what's wrong here?
I sort by series (that have multiple authors), and my series group together. I that's what I want to focus on, then it's easy to access anything labeled as that series (assuming all series labels are the same - The Chronicles of Narnia will list differently than just Chronicles of Narnia if entered differently and will not show in order or when clicking the series shortcut link in the book details panel - making sure you use autocomplete is key to keeping this consistent and a major timesaver).
I often shortcut to series as needed by the search bar and typing the keywords or getting to one book and then following the book details link (one of the best things ever added to Calibre) or just scrolling through my books grouped by series (series names are now cleaned up).
I have some series where short stories related or in sequence with the series are contained in a collection/anthology. I just go ahead and enter the series and number with that collection so that when sorted or searched by series it comes up.
Now, if the collection has stories from multiple series, that gets trickier. In most cases, I don't care. There aren't that many. I may not them in the comments, however, with the descriptions listed (whether from metadata download or copy/paste from the book or web) so that they would show if I searched the series name to see what it "hits' on as long as comments are included in the default search parameters I set up.
There might be a "fancier" way to handle this. Perhaps that's is what Kovid described in his post about custom columns. However, I haven't put that thought together.
I have A LOT OF SERIES books and many with different authors. My method has worked very efficiently. Of course, you could always pull an excerpt from a collection and make it a unique book entry. It's reasonably easy with the Epub Split plug-in. I've done it for a few things because I didn't want to deal with the bundle as it was (3 authors, unrelated stories, each in their own series). Still, those were few.
Personally, just as a helpful reference I also add a Tag for books in series that have multiple authors (Multi-author series). It can be a helpful reference, but you have to remember to add the tag.
I also have some helpful advice for spin-off series that are better read after the original but are sometimes referred to in their own sequences. I won't provide that here as it may not matter to you, but feel free to post or send me a message.
I hope this info does help. Send or post for me anything you can/want to share so I can understand the problem better if I've missed the mark.
I can note that I've managed library management of over 12,000 entries without having to create truly custom columns to do so. I only just recently created one for relatable printed book page counts. This means the system has worked well without to much "effort" to find what I want - after I set the basic data correctly, of course.
I am a little curious as to the custom column Kovid mentioned above and will play around with it when I have the time to see if it can improve anything such as those few collections that have multiple series contained inside. It never hurts to know more.
Remember to let Calibre do the work for you (I was used to doing so much manually it took me awhile to realize that Calibre was more than just a "listing" database.
Some advice on updating your metadata:
1) Use the download meta feature. If it doesn't return enough info or good info or just nothing at all, then....
2) Check that the ISBN number is already in the blank. If NOT, do a quick google search or look in the book to get and paste it in (I think the format has to be isbn:....but there is a macro button there to help with that). I found that if I put the missing ISBN where books aren't returning any to little data, that helps it search and usually gets better returns. Also, make sure the title is "clean" as some books put a bunch of description in their titles that mess with the search. Keep it straight forward and/or completely drop stuff after colons or in parentheses. If it returns in the meta search, you can let it override (assuming your settings are for that) or modify afterward.
3) Make sure you have at least 4 sources for your meta info (see preferences)
4) If these are insufficient, you can always and easily google or go to author sites and copy/past info into the comments. Typically, you will also see info like published date which could be entered if needed or desired.
5) If needed, you can also drag/drop a cover photo from the web onto the book cover when in Edit Metadata as long as the photo is set up the traditional way on the web.