[Rellwood]

I have two ideas:

1. Unique column duplicator

2. Library backup

The first idea, unique column duplicator came to mind when I kept having to duplicate custom columns with appending unique characters so that merging libraries will not lose data. Long text, tags shown in the tag browser, dates and yes/no do not merge.

Many libraries have the same columns.

I got tired of losing fixed data when copying books from one library to another, mainly when consolidating whole libraries. I didn’t like having to weed through duplicates if I create new book records. To prevent this, I have been creating duplicate composite columns with a unique string appended to the name. In all my libraries I have a Date Read {#dateread} column this isn’t helpful when copying one book to another library with the same book in it with the same #dateread column. If I create a new record I still have to merge the two manually at some point or another. Copying book data overwrites fixed data as well. So I just create new columns and copy/paste from the original to create a unique column with the same data that can now be compared side by side when merging records.

Helpful for reviews, get file names, and anything else you don’t want to lose.
I have seen many plugins scan a library to see if there is appropriate columns and if not the plugin generates them automatically.

My desired goal is to have a plugin that can either allow a user to enter the unique string or has the plugin follow a set pattern and indicate what column is to be duplicated.

The second idea is a plugin that gives users a Mulligan if they ruin their libraries in a session. It copies the metadata.db file into a separate folder every time a library is accessed, so whatever damage that has been done in that one session can be reset closer to time than a computer restore point and much quicker. Sure you need to do a vacuumed and check and remove any books you added in that session, but it’s still better than doing an entire library reset which takes longer, and may or may not even be available. If a user realizes they screwed up and need to go back they close the library, copy the saved metadata.db over to the library to be restored, start Calibre back up, and it’s