[adolwyn]

Hello everyone,

I'm on day two of hyperfocusing on consuming all the content that's ever been produced on youtube, this forum, and the Calibre subreddit to try to help my brain figure out how to organize my wildly disorganized library. I've found lots of great ideas which have resulted in my brain flipping fully into paralysis mode and now I'm stuck.

I'm sure the answer really is: "just start somewhere," but if any of you have some time or ideas for how to start and a way to make this efficient (probably impossible) and at least orderly, I would appreciate your thoughts. I've read through this whole library management forum back at least 20 pages and have searched and haven't come up with anything that seems to help, but maybe I'm trying the wrong words.

The setup:

• I have a Calibre library with just over 2500 books in it. They're in various stages of disarray, from all over the internet, including my kindle purchases that I deDRMed, kobo, free books, PDFs, almost 20 years work of accumulation.
  
• I also have an "Ebooks" folder with many (but not all) of my accumulated ebooks in all different formats. Many are in my Calibre library, but plenty are not. There are also books in my Calibre library that are not in this ebooks folder. This folder has both straight book files and also books in folders.

Where I'm stuck:

1. Is there a good way to bulk add everything from my ebooks folder and Calibre can tell me if the book is already in it or not?
2. Can it add a folder with subfolders? I'd like to make sure I have added all my purchased books/free books/found books/etc into my library as it will drive my brain to distraction knowing there might be amazing books in that folder that I've just forgotten about.

Once all my books are in, the task of cleaning them up and organizing them must begin.

1. Should I begin by running quality check on everything first and fixing any formatting errors? I have the Quality Check plugin downloaded already.
2. Is there anything else I should do to make sure the books are all formatted properly?
3. Should I convert them all to epub first?
4. I have books in there that are PDFs, DOCs, TXTs, etc (as I said, I have some old ones). Should I just remove those and keep an eye open for updated ones if they go on sale somewhere?
5. Is there a 'best practices' for where to start fixing the metadata? Covers first? Download metadata? Page count plugin?
6. I have the following metadata sources installed: Amazon.com Multiple Countries, Barnes & Noble, Fantastic Fiction, Goodreads, Kindle hi-res covers, Kobo Metadata.

I will be loading the organized books to my Kobo Libra Colour.

1. Is there any prep that I should do to make the process as easy as possible?
2. I understand the KindleTouchExtended plugin is no longer needed in Calibre 8.5 (the version I'm on), but KoboUtilities I'm assuming is needed?
3. I tried to install some of the other recommended Kepub plugins and they aren't showing up, so I'm assuming those are no longer needed as well?

Is there anything I should know that might not be obvious? Are there any search terms that I might not be using to do more reading of the great info on these forums?
What is your favourite tip or trick or neat hack or custom column or anything else that gives your brain dopamine?

Thank you all for reading and I appreciate any time/help/answers/suggestions you may have the time to pass along to me. In the meantime, I'll keep working to educate myself as I dig into all the posts in here.