[chaley]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

So, if I wanted to store metadata for Publishers in calibre, I would create a Publishers library, hide all or most of the standard columns, add relevant custom column definitions and then create a placeholder book for each Publisher into which I would enter the publisher details - e.g. HQ Address, Founder, Date Founded, Speciality, Countries, Imprints etc etc.

Yes. The one requirement is that the publisher field in the placeholder books contains the exact name of the publisher used in the books library.

Now assume I have Bloomsbury in my Publishers library.

What would I have to do to establish a link from Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" in my Books library to Bloomsbury in my Publishers library.

And what/where would I click to pop the Bloomsbury details window.

BR

I assume that the publisher recorded in "To the Lighthouse" is "Bloomsbury". I further assume that the Publishers library is named "Publishers".

Using what I have built, you would create a composite column, not "behaves like tags", "contains HTML" is checked. Put this column with comments or not, as you wish.

The template would be:

program:
	make_book_details_search_links('publisher:Publisher', '')

In book details for the book "For the Lighthouse" you would see in that new composite something like this:

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Clicking on that link would open a book details window for the book in the Publishers library with publisher == Bloomsbury.

If you did the same thing with Series, made a Series library with the appropriate information, then you could add these links to the composite column with

program:
	make_book_details_search_links('publisher:Publisher,series:Series', '<br>')

You would then see in the composite something like this using "Rivers of London" as the series name:

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Series: Rivers of London

And so on for Tags, Genres, whatever.

Finally, and for completeness, you could add the authors so the links are all in one place. Assuming the Authors library is named Authors:

program:
	make_book_details_search_links(
		'publisher:Publisher,series:Series,authors:Authors', '<br>')

You would see something like:

Publisher: Bloomsbury
Series: Rivers of London
Authors: Author1, Author2 ...

Final note 1: the columns displayed in the cross library book details and their order are controlled by the configuration of the "other" library. In other words, the book information window displayed "cross library" looks like the book information window displayed when looking directly at that library.

Final note 2: you do of course have the option of getting book links from the "other library", changing them from "show-book" to "book-details" then pasting them manually into comments. I don't think this is practical, but you can do it.

Final note 3: you can format generated links however you want if you build the URLs yourself in a template. I am 100% certain this isn't something you would want to do, but others might.