[RandomLibrarian]

I recently split up my library of approx. 4000 books in to different libraries because getting a good solid grasp on fixing the metadata was overwhelming. It worked wonders and I've got about 80% of the cataloging done. However, there have been a few times recently I ended up searching different libraries to make absolutely sure I didn't have a book I could have sworn I did. No biggie, but this led me to dive into options about searching multiple libraries at once.

I discovered that virtual libraries wouldn't help me here. I learned that Calibre actually recommends you don't do what I did, and split your libraries. This is where frustration kind of reared its head. I mostly agree with Calibre, and when I am done cataloging all my items maybe I will bring them all back together. The problem I have is that the limitation seems to exist in a vacuum that doesn't fit reality. The find metadata feature of calibre kind of sucks if you are going for a relatively accurate set of metadata. It'll get close, but it will mess up almost as much as it fixes and you really won't save much time over doing it manually for small to medium sized libraries.

Would be nice to see a feature to bring physically separate libraries together via virtual libraries or linked libraries. (This isn't a feature request post) Has anyone overcome this kind of hurdle and kept their libraries separate? I'd like to hear feedback by people who've worked through this process before so I don't attempt reinventing any wheels. Thanks.