[chaley]

Originally Posted by reader363

1) For anthology collections that have 3-5 different stories in it that each have their series, I would potentially have to create up to 3-5 separate custom series columns in order to input each Series name and index number.

That is correct.

I could not be assured that when clicking on a series name from the tag browser that I would see all the books in that series. Makes Series in tag browser unmeaningful and would have to resort to searches instead to find all books under that one series name.

You can use grouped search terms to solve this problem. See Preferences/searching. Note: today I made improvements in the display of grouped search terms in the tag browsery that should appear in today's release (0.8.9).

How would one go about achieving a solution similar to how Author field works for Series?

You can't unless you change calibre itself.

I tried looking thru the customizable sections of the GUI and plugins. I don't see a way to view the code that controls how Author works. And don't have a way to view/change the code that controls how Series works to match it. It's obvious in my tests on creating new custom Series categories (i.e. User categories) that they are working differently than how the existing system Series category works.

Custom series columns are not user categories. I am not sure what you mean by the "i.e.".

Custom series columns do work like the standard series column. Why do you say otherwise?

If I understand your use of "view the code" correctly, you want to see calibre's source code. See http://manual.calibre-ebook.com/develop.html for instructions on how to get the source. I should note, however, that changing the standard series column to support multiple items will be an enormous change.