A calibre library consists of afolder containing the metadata.db file, and various author folders. In each author folder are book folders inside the book folders are the actual book files and cover.jpg cover images.
From your description it sounds to me like you have ended up with metadata.db inside a folder with author and book subfolders but no actual files.
So figure out which folder contains the sub folders that have the actual ebook files. Once you know that, copy metadata.db into that folder, then tell calibre to use it as the library folder.
Alternately, keep your existing library, and you can right click the add books button and chosoe add books from folders and sub-folders. and choose the parent folder containing all the author folders that contain the actual files. Select one book per folder and it should re-import everything preserving the metadata, covers, etc/
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