[Habakkuk]

I travel a lot and like to have my library available wherever I am so I can choose my next book to read without having to plan it before I depart. As I don't take a laptop with me, only an iPad, it means I must be able to access my library on-line.

The way I have managed this is to have my library stored in the cloud — for me this is Apple's iCloud — or you could use any other service such as Dropbox, as long as it has the ability to be seen as a drive on your computer. Calibre is then set up to store the library in that cloud drive, not on the computer itself.

Now using the relevant cloud server access app, e.g. the iCloud Drive or Dropbox apps, I can see my entire library arranged by author. I just dig down till I find the book I'm after and download it on to my iPad. If it happens to be in .txt format it will load in Pages, but then I can save it as an ePub and read it in iBooks.

Complementary to this I keep an up-to-date catalogue on my iPad which makes searching for a book easier.

Of course I can't add books to the library or edit any metadata, but these activities can wait till I get home. Also storing the library on the cloud means I don't have to worry about losing it if my computer crashes.