[Lady Fitzgerald]

Hmmm... Normally, this old broad has trouble wrapping her mind around new technology but this basic concept came easy. Actually, it's not even new to me. I used to work in warehousing. I remember over 20 years ago trying to get our IE rep to come up with something similar for tracking stock (back then, we kept everything in the bins and racks in numerical order; we were constantly moving stock to make room so we could keep it in order). He kept claiming it was impossible even when I gave him published proof that GE and the U.S. Army had been doing it for 20 years (heck, if the Army can make it work, anyone can). Once we were rid of him, we finally got a locator system that worked similar to calibre. We parked our material where ever it would fit, with the fastest moving stock being kept in more accessable areas. We told the computer system where we put it. Later, when we needed it, the computer would tell us where to find it, how much was there, etc. When I retired from there 6 1/2 years ago, many people still didn't know how to use it. Instead of assigning location codes in a logical order, they would use discriptive terms, like "back wall," etc., then gripe a bluestreak when the computer pick lists would have them running back and forth all over the place. It couldn't have been rocket science if I could understand it.

I have my music cataloged in a program similar to this. The data (artist, album name, track names, etc.) get inputted (both manually and from the CD) and initially viewed in a tree form similar to windows folder filing system but one can bring up reports using pretty much any criteria one wants. Calibre just takes it a step further in that a book can be accessed from within any search.

I have duplicate files in Windows because of the flat file structure. I recently learned one can use shortcuts to do the same thing. That would eliminate duplicate files but requires more manual input than finding something by tags. Once I learn more about how to use Excel 2007 (or Open Office; constant upgrading of MS Office is getting too expensive), I may just have one folder or just a handful of folders) per drive and just drop the files in whatever order they land and use a homebrew (or commercial, if I find one) searchable data base that searches tags to find them.

Btw, if calibre's filing system makes people nervous, just keep two folders; calbre's and one that uses traditional file organization. When I scan one of my books to a PDF file, I save it with a file name structure that includes author, title, series name and number (if part of a series), and ISBN number to a folder. Then I import it into calibre. I edit the meta data using the ISNB. It takes less time to edit the meta data than it did to type the original file name. Since I have plenty of room on my drive (1TB) now and the case I'll someday import the innards of my present computer to has room for 8 drives (6 data, 1 hotswap bay I'll use for backups, and a place to put an SSD for a boot drive once I upgrade to Win7), methinks I'll keep the original files, too (yes, I am paranoid).