[DaltonST]

Originally Posted by Tanjamuse

... Also I would probably end up having to use more than one CALM library and I'm pretty sure that that's not possible.

Yes, you may have multiple CALM Target Libraries. You just have to specify a different "parent" directory for each one.

Examples:

X:\Libraries\Fiction\Science\CALM\metadata.db
X:\Libraries\Fiction\Romance\CALM\metadata.db

X:\Libraries\FanFiction\Science\CALM\metadata.db
X:\Libraries\FanFiction\Romance\CALM\metadata.db

X:\Libraries\Factual\History\CALM\metadata.db


The main purpose of CALM is to standardize metadata across multiple libraries. Just adding a few new books should not warrant refreshing a CALM Target Library and running a Consolidation for 50,000 books.

Here is an idea to consider:

Perhaps adding new books (and legacy old, "dirty" books) to a special "scrubbing" Library, and then consolidating that "scrubbing" Source Library with a special "Clean Metadata Only" reference Source Library that is mostly static. It would contain only 1 book per type of metadata in your ecosystem.

Just like some people have a static book that has every Tag that is valid for them personally, you could have a single static Library that has every valid metadata value for you personally. Nothing more, and nothing less.

You could create the static reference Library by copying selected books from various other Libraries, and allowing Calibre to automatically add missing Custom Columns to the static Library.

The value of that is that your Consolidation jobs would run very, very fast because you would have relatively few books to be consolidated.

After you standardized the new books in the "scrubbing" Library, you would copy them to their proper Source Library and then delete them from the "scrubbing" Library.

Just an idea.

I use QuarantineAndScrub instead, but that is because all of my Libraries are already Q&S Libraries. If they were not, and if I did not already need and use Q&S, I would use the approach described above.

Q&S is for automated scrubbing of extremely bad metadata, including Authors, Title, Series, Series Index, Tags, and ISBNs.

CALM is far less automated than Q&S, and has far fewer scrubbing tools. However, CALM is a great tool to use by someone for whom that particular shoe fits.


DaltonST