Quote:
Originally Posted by ownedbycats
I use Calibre itself to also catalog my paper books. I have a dummy .paperbook file that I add to the book records.
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What do you do about different format prints and different editions of the same print format?
I did consider that. Also some people do use it to catalogue other things, but it's not ideal. There are better catalogue systems.
Also I have maybe over 3000 books. I remember what it was like in the 1980s and 1990s computerising video rental libraries and book libraries in colleges. Those were better suited to video or books, but the issue was the time creating all the records accurately. I still have two regular barcode scannner systems as well as the phone app, which can look up the ISBN. With the ebooks it's so simple. You right click on the ebook or a selected block of ebooks in your file manager. Calibre copies them.
BUT the big thing is that the ebooks already have basic metadata of the title and author. Sometimes the series and tags. Sometimes a decent cover. Then Incomparably more work is needed for paper books. Many I have are too old to have ISBNs to scan to quickly get metadata.
So I don't use Calibre for my paper books. If I was going to catalogue them I'd use a more library orientated program that also created unique barcodes, as the ISBN only are of use to start entering data. A proper paper book system uses a unique per copy barcode of a different type, or an RF tag.
I know people do put paper books and other things into Calibre and use it just as a searchable catalogue. But really if you have over 500 books or videos or audio CDs or LPs etc, you are better to get a more suitable program. The topic has been addressed in the Calibre forum.
Twenty years ago you had to buy an expensive commercial program, but there are good enough free ones to manage physical collections. Almost none of the plugins/utilities or transfer options relate to physical collections. Also Calibre is strictly single user. A good library or collection management system uses MSDE (free MSSQL) or MySQL or MariaDB etc for a real multiuser database that can be on a network.