Version 1.32.0 - 12 May 2015
Add checking of the current availability of linked books to be borrowed and estimation of hold/wait time for books that are not immediately available. Results are provided via a custom column.
Handle change to Axis 360 website design. (Fixes
Server response error (Cannot parse searchresultsummary: Titles that match).)
Improve book matching algorithm to take subtitles into account in more cases. This will reduce the number of instances where similarly named books are incorrectly linked.
Improve search for books at Oyster by doing additional searches using discovered author IDs.
Fix links for purchasable books at Oyster mistakenly shown as available to borrow.
Switch Scribd back to original search interface since that produces slightly better results.
Check Current Availability of Linked Books
The plugin has the optional ability to check previously linked books in order to determine whether they are currently available to be borrowed and if not provide an estimate of the expected hold/wait time in weeks.
In order to use this feature a custom column must be created by the user in the calibre library. Choose
Preferences ->
Add your own columns ->
Add custom column. Enter a
Lookup name of
ol_wait_weeks and a
Column heading with any desired label. The
Column type must be
Text, column shown in tag browser or
Comma separated text, like tags, shown in tag browser. You will need to restart calibre for the new column to take effect.
Once the custom column has been created, a menu choice of
Check current availability of selected books will become available. Choosing this will cause the plugin to check each of the borrowable links for the selected book(s) and use the results to populate the custom column. (These links must have been previously established by using the search capability of the plugin.) Only links that correspond to enabled libraries in the configuration will be checked.
The custom column will be populated with a series of comma separated entries, one for each link. Each entry is of the form
##@LIBNAME, where
## is the estimated wait time for the book in weeks and
LIBNAME is the configured library name for that link. A wait time of "00" indicates available now, "99" weeks is the maximum that can be shown, and "XX" indicates that the availability could not be determined for that link. Links are sorted by wait duration, none to low to high, so that sorting the calibre library by this column by clicking on the column header will sort books in order of current availability.
The ability of the plugin to estimate availability and wait time varies based on the library provider. Providing credentials in the configuration to sign into a library will add further information for some providers as described below:
- 3M Cloud Library: Provides current availability or estimated wait. Only new (V2) 3M library sites are supported.
- Amazon Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library: Shows released books as always available and takes into account the release date of pre-release books.
- Axis360: Provides current availability or estimated wait based on the existing number of holds.
- EBSCOhost, Enki Library and OneClickdigital: Not yet supported.
- Freading: Shows released books as always available. Will take into account the release date of pre-release books only if sign-in credentials are provided.
- Hoopla, Project Gutenberg, Open Library (read and printdisabled collections), Oyster, and Scribd: Shows all books as always available.
- Open Library (lendinglibrary and inlibrary collections): Provides current availability or estimated wait based on the existing number of holds. Providing credentials to sign-in will also take into account the user's current position on the hold list for the book, if any.
- OverDrive: Provides current availability or estimated wait based on the existing number of holds. Also takes into account the date-of availability for pre-release books. Providing credentials to sign-in will also take into account OverDrive Advantage copies and the user's current position on the hold list for the book, if any.