To build a library (question) (PRS650)

[Johansen]

(Delete if this is judged to be to stupid, I AM new at this. Now I have been crawling around this board all day, but I still wonder what to do...)

I just got my first ebook-reader (Sony PRS 650), and I like it. It seems to do everything I expected of it, which is not so strange, maybe, as I only want to read books .
On the other hand, I read a lot. (For a seven day vacation, I brought 20 books, and had 4 left when I returned. And yes, I did do a lot more than read all the time).
So, an ebook-reader seemed like a good idea. No more overweight when flying.

I am also a "series-freak", I love series. And I always go back and forth when I read, looking up things in previous books etc.

And there is the problem, right there. How do I arrange my reader so that I can actually FIND the books I am looking for?

I get the point about using tags for "groups". Originally I was going to group by genre (crime, adventure, sci-fi, fantasy etc), but then I realized this would look great in theory, but I would not find the books on my reader afterwards.

Then I figured, if I use tags with Author and Series I should have groups that should be meaningful to me. But just importing from Calibre, I would not know what book is where in the series... And as a series-freak, I just HAVE TO read the books in the right order.

- How do you arrange your books?
- Should I change the Title to "series, number, author, name of book" in order to find anything?
- And then keep the crime/fantasy/sci-fi-grouping?
- And how do I do a "search/replace" so that I do not have to edit my 250 books manually?

Like I said, I love my reader, and Calibre seems to be just the program to keep me organized, but presently I am running around with 10 books in my reader (all different authors), and that is about it, if I want to keep control. I may have wasted money on my new 32GB memory-card;(

[vulcan_girl]

- Select book(s).
-Select Edit the metadata individually.
- When the window pops up, there's the list of data: Title, Title Sort, Author, etc. There is an option for Series.
- Enter the series name, then you can select which number in the series the book is.
-Click OK or next, depending on how many books you are editing at once.

You also have to go to Preferences>Advanced>Plugins>Device Interface plugins>SONY Device interface. Select that plugin and click Customize plugin. The bottom entry allows you to set collections based on data. Mine are tags and series. That way when I send to the Sony, I get collections based on the tags I use for the books and also for series I create.

In order to keep your collections from changing when you don't want them to, go to Preferences>Import/Export>Sending books to device>Metadata management. Change this to Manual Management. Click Save.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by vulcan_girl

In order to keep your collections from changing when you don't want them to, go to Preferences>Import/Export>Sending books to device>Metadata management. Change this to Manual Management. Click Save.

Or set it to Automatic and only use calibre to place books on your ereader. Automatic management makes recreating the collections on your ereader after your Sony hiccups and destroys all your collections easy and quick.

[mdb5972]

for the order of the series to input into calibre meta tags I have been using this site as a base http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/. Also in 'most' cases I can use this site to get a nice graphic for the cover vs the internal one.

Depending on which site you want to use as a base be aware that some list them in printing order or chronological order of the story. I prefer printing order as that is how I originally read them in hard copy.

[vulcan_girl]

I did have the management set to automatic, but then if I wasn't careful when importing books, I would end up with additional collections based on random tags inserted by the publisher.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by vulcan_girl

I did have the management set to automatic, but then if I wasn't careful when importing books, I would end up with additional collections based on random tags inserted by the publisher.

You choose what you use to create collection in the device interface plugin. By default it is set to create collections based on tags and series info. You could just as easily use series and a custom Genre column. It is up to the user how collections are automatically created.

[vulcan_girl]

I'm still fiddling with my collections, having gone from series and tags, tags only, only using one tag per book, then multiple tags and then back to series and tags, and then changing the series names on the reader itself, and that's just since December!

It's definitely a process.

[Johansen]

Thanks for all your help so far.

Question:
Now I have exported most of my books from Calibre to my Sony 650, and after editing the tags in Calibre, things start making sense. I use a combination of numbers and names in order to get the tags first (1 Adventure, 2 Fantasy, 3 Sci-fi), and then all the series follows alphabetically. This works for me.

But I am still having problems with the series. Do I really have to put numbers in front of the book title in order to have the books sorted in the right order?

If yes, are there any easy commands to get the books number in the series copyed from the series-part of Calibre and in front of the title? Preferably without getting the whole series-title as well?

[itimpi]

It depends on how you want to acces the books in the Sony. If you want them to be accessed by Title then you DO have to play around with putting series info into the title. However if you access them as a collection (which is what I normally do) based on the Series name then they are automatically put into the correct order by Calibre based on the Series Index.

[Johansen]

Do I feel stupid right now?

For some reason, I imagined the way the series were presented was not in numerical order.

I was wrong, of course.

I'll keep quiet for a while, and wash the eggs off my face.

Again, thank you all for replies

[jackie_w]

Originally Posted by Johansen

Do I really have to put numbers in front of the book title in order to have the books sorted in the right order?

Rest assured you do not need to edit any Titles within calibre.

Assuming you have populated the Series and Series_index boxes correctly in Edit Metadata there are several things you can do.

If you want to see ALL Books by Author/Series/Series_index/Title in a single list, you can tell calibre you want a "special" Collection to do exactly this.

You do this via Preferences - Plugins - Device Interface plugins - Sony - Customise plugin. One of the boxes is labelled "Comma separated list of metadata fields ..." and contains a list of those fields you want to create Collections on your Sony.

Mine says

aba:%All by Author, abt:%All by Title, tags

You might like something different but the "special" All by Author Collection is the aba:%All by Author bit and results in a Collection called "%All by Author" on page 1 of my Collections.

You also need to go to Preferences - Sending books to device and change the Metadata management box to "Automatic management".

You might wonder why you can't just use 'Books see All' from the Home page, then tap 'by Author' in the top right corner. The reason is that this sorts your books by Author but within each Author the books are not in any useful sequence.

If you want to see Series name and/or Series_index actually displayed as part of the Title on the reader then you can use calibre's Preferences - Metadata Plugboard. If you're new to all this it may be information overload at the moment. However when you're ready to have a go you can ask more questions here. This is the relevant part of the User Manual.

[Johansen]

This solved SO many of my problems

One question about Calibre that is probably NOT Sony-related:
When I started up, I sorted my ebooks manually, I saw no reason to have the books that the reader cannot read in the library. (Yes, I am big on manual labor, I know).
With Calibre, I realize I may just as well include the rest of the formats in the library, just to get it all in one place. (I decided I would have the Calibre-library, and a backup of the Calibre-library (on another disk), and delete the rest of the files.)

So, I imported all the formats I had previously NOT included.

Now, I must merge the "new" books with the "old" ones. More manual labour, I guess, as this should probably NOT be done automatically.

BUT, is there any way to have Calibre display only the books where I have more than one with the same name/author?

[jackie_w]

I'm not very expert with calibre's search language. Do you mean you have 2 or more entries in the library which should all have been entered under one book.

The relevant bit of the manual is here but it may not cover the complexities you need. If you don't get any responses here, it might be worth opening a new thread specifically asking for help with Search and specifying exactly what you're trying to do.