MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Defining a large list according to subjective negative criteria

J Milford · 12-21-2014, 03:47 AM

I wish to define a large subset of books according to subjective criteria and a subtractive process. Specifically, I would like to share, say, 90% of a large (and largely Gutenberg) library with my mother. This would seem to be a job for tagging, except that there are quite a few books, so tagging (say) 9000 of them is a pain, involving selecting thousands of books to edit the metadata in bulk, or doing the same thing in smaller batches to avoid the risk of accidentally un-selecting everything, etc. The converse, subtractive process would involve first tagging everything as acceptable, and then laboriously selecting 1000 books to untag. Given the bulk metadata interface, this too is a royal pain.

The ideal solution would seem to be a virtual library. Simply add everything to the virtual library, and then remove those books that are unwanted. However, as far as I can tell, virtual libraries are essentially just saved searches, and unlike real libraries (or playlists, which they seem similar to), do not allow the manual addition and subtraction of books except via the laborious tagging method or other algorithmic procedures. And based on the comments here -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+...6?comments=all -- for reasons of difficulty or principle, the designers seem disinclined to add this functionality.

So I guess my question is, is there an easier method for building up or subtracting down a subjective subset of books than using the laborious bulk metadata edit approach? All I really want to do is quickly go through my books and delete all the ones that seem inappropriate. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be easily possible, but I've often overlooked some hidden functionality or clever solution in Calibre, so I was hoping there was an alternative here.

12-21-2014, 03:47 AM	#1
J Milford Junior Member Posts: 3 Karma: 10 Join Date: Dec 2014 Device: Kindle Fire	Defining a large list according to subjective negative criteria I wish to define a large subset of books according to subjective criteria and a subtractive process. Specifically, I would like to share, say, 90% of a large (and largely Gutenberg) library with my mother. This would seem to be a job for tagging, except that there are quite a few books, so tagging (say) 9000 of them is a pain, involving selecting thousands of books to edit the metadata in bulk, or doing the same thing in smaller batches to avoid the risk of accidentally un-selecting everything, etc. The converse, subtractive process would involve first tagging everything as acceptable, and then laboriously selecting 1000 books to untag. Given the bulk metadata interface, this too is a royal pain. The ideal solution would seem to be a virtual library. Simply add everything to the virtual library, and then remove those books that are unwanted. However, as far as I can tell, virtual libraries are essentially just saved searches, and unlike real libraries (or playlists, which they seem similar to), do not allow the manual addition and subtraction of books except via the laborious tagging method or other algorithmic procedures. And based on the comments here -- https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+...6?comments=all -- for reasons of difficulty or principle, the designers seem disinclined to add this functionality. So I guess my question is, is there an easier method for building up or subtracting down a subjective subset of books than using the laborious bulk metadata edit approach? All I really want to do is quickly go through my books and delete all the ones that seem inappropriate. For some reason, that doesn't seem to be easily possible, but I've often overlooked some hidden functionality or clever solution in Calibre, so I was hoping there was an alternative here.