Do you use Calibre for print books?

[Statch]

I use Calibre to manage all my ebooks, and it's wonderful. I know it has the capability to let me add in the metadata for my print books as well, and I've been thinking about doing that so I can stop using the spreadsheet I currently use to make sure I don't buy books twice . I have about 1700 ebooks in Calibre, and I would have to add the metadata for about 1300 print books to be able to stop using the spreadsheet.

It would be a lot of work, especially since I don't have the ISBNs for the print books in the spreadsheet, so much of it would have to be manual. On the other hand, it would save me the trouble of keeping the ebook records in two places (Calibre and the spreadsheet).

I'm curious to know how many people out there use Calibre to keep records on all your books, not just ebooks?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Statch

I use Calibre to manage all my ebooks, and it's wonderful. I know it has the capability to let me add in the metadata for my print books as well, and I've been thinking about doing that so I can stop using the spreadsheet I currently use to make sure I don't buy books twice . I have about 1700 ebooks in Calibre, and I would have to add the metadata for about 1300 print books to be able to stop using the spreadsheet.

It would be a lot of work, especially since I don't have the ISBNs for the print books in the spreadsheet, so much of it would have to be manual. On the other hand, it would save me the trouble of keeping the ebook records in two places (Calibre and the spreadsheet).

I'm curious to know how many people out there use Calibre to keep records on all your books, not just ebooks?

Absolutely.
Use Add from ISBN (when Available) You can even set a special tag.
For the rest of the (dead sea scrolls ), Add empty books and populate the Author, Title fields and see if there is Metadata .

[Stampercam]

I have an extensive library for my ebooks, and even more actual books on my bookshelves, but using calibre for them all wasn't the best option for me. I use Book Collector for my books (available at http://www.collectorz.com/book/). One of the reasons I chose that program was because I can use my barcode scanner to scan the isbn barcodes from the back and then it will find all the metadata details online like calibre does. It was quick and painless and I did bulk lots really quickly. Another feature is the ability to import from spreadsheets, so if you already have a lot done that way it could be a nice easy import.

Cam


PS, I think would work ok with an ipod or iphone as the scanner, but haven't actually checked

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Stampercam

I have an extensive library for my ebooks, and even more actual books on my bookshelves, but using calibre for them all wasn't the best option for me. I use Book Collector for my books (available at http://www.collectorz.com/book/). One of the reasons I chose that program was because I can use my barcode scanner to scan the isbn barcodes from the back and then it will find all the metadata details online like calibre does. It was quick and painless and I did bulk lots really quickly. Another feature is the ability to import from spreadsheets, so if you already have a lot done that way it could be a nice easy import.

Cam


PS, I think would work ok with an ipod or iphone as the scanner, but haven't actually checked

Barcode wedge scanner (Symbol 4004) work great with add from ISBN.
Over 900 books added that way (batches of 10-20 to allow resolving look-up failures.)

[Stampercam]

That's good to know, I never tried using barcode scanner with calibre.

[Statch]

I have a barcode scanner that I used for LibraryThing several years ago. How do I use it with Calibre?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Statch

I have a barcode scanner that I used for LibraryThing several years ago. How do I use it with Calibre?

Add from ISBN on the Add book arrow menu.
If the scanner is not configured for a 'newline' after each scan,you will have to supply it from the keyboard or change the scanner 'suffix' configuration.
Remember to scan only EAN codes that start with 978.
Also, you can interleave a hand keyed ISBN for books that don't have bare codes.

For those that have SAN, try inserting a zero at the start.
for those missing the check digit, I set them asside and entered check digits [0-9X] until Calibre gave the Green

[Statch]

Originally Posted by theducks

Add from ISBN on the Add book arrow menu.
If the scanner is not configured for a 'newline' after each scan,you will have to supply it from the keyboard or change the scanner 'suffix' configuration.
Remember to scan only EAN codes that start with 978.
Also, you can interleave a hand keyed ISBN for books that don't have bare codes.

For those that have SAN, try inserting a zero at the start.
for those missing the check digit, I set them asside and entered check digits [0-9X] until Calibre gave the Green

Fantastic -- thanks so much! I'm going to try it this evening.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Statch

Fantastic -- thanks so much! I'm going to try it this evening.

If you already have a List of ISBNS, you can paste them into ADD from ISBN

(read the note on the screen for more )

[Statch]

Originally Posted by Stampercam

I have an extensive library for my ebooks, and even more actual books on my bookshelves, but using calibre for them all wasn't the best option for me. I use Book Collector for my books (available at http://www.collectorz.com/book/). One of the reasons I chose that program was because I can use my barcode scanner to scan the isbn barcodes from the back and then it will find all the metadata details online like calibre does. It was quick and painless and I did bulk lots really quickly. Another feature is the ability to import from spreadsheets, so if you already have a lot done that way it could be a nice easy import.

Cam


PS, I think would work ok with an ipod or iphone as the scanner, but haven't actually checked

I just looked up Book Collector, and it looks like really nice software. One big advantage I see is that it has an Android app (and iThing apps too, of course). I think I'll stick with Calibre, since I use SugarSync to back up my Calibre library, so can check that way with my Android phone to see if I already have a book when I'm at the bookstore, but Book Collector does look very good.

[Statch]

Just in case anyone is interested in this topic, I did try my Cuecat scanner with the Calibre 'add book by ISBN' feature. Unfortunately, the Cuecat has an encrypted output, and Calibre apparently doesn't read it. (I had used it in the past with LibraryThing, but they sell them so can decrypt the output. The Cuecat is a really old barcode scanner; there's no reason for Calibre to support the decryption.)

I've decided that since I already have a spreadsheet with the print book titles (but unfortunately not the ISBNs), it's almost as fast to add a bunch of 'unknown' books to the database, copy and paste the titles in one at a time, and update the metadata from there. I've done 40 so far while watching TV...no big deal. I'll be happy to be done with the separate spreadsheet.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Statch

Just in case anyone is interested in this topic, I did try my Cuecat scanner with the Calibre 'add book by ISBN' feature. Unfortunately, the Cuecat has an encrypted output, and Calibre apparently doesn't read it. (I had used it in the past with LibraryThing, but they sell them so can decrypt the output. The Cuecat is a really old barcode scanner; there's no reason for Calibre to support the decryption.)

I've decided that since I already have a spreadsheet with the print book titles (but unfortunately not the ISBNs), it's almost as fast to add a bunch of 'unknown' books to the database, copy and paste the titles in one at a time, and update the metadata from there. I've done 40 so far while watching TV...no big deal. I'll be happy to be done with the separate spreadsheet.

There is a Moders page to decrypt (Confuse-A-Cat) the outputhttp://cexx.org/cuecat.htm


A wedge barcode scanner, will output Keyboard codes, just as if you had typed them.

[TreborPugly]

I was a user of Book Collector for my physical library, and just had a bunch of files for my ebook library until I discovered Calibre. I find Calibre to be a much more flexible tool for a book database than Book Collector, so I worked out a kluge to create a Calibre library of my physical books.

I exported my book list in Book Collector to CSV, and then used Excel to generate command lines to create dummy text files with author, series, title, and isbn, and then imported them all into a fresh library on Calibre. I had a few ouliers with funky characters in the titles, and I'm still working through using Calibre to fetch meta data and covers for them, but once I've done that, I'll probably only maintain the Calibre library.

[dasimser]

I have had some success using a webcam barcode reader: http://www.bcwebcam.de/en/index.htm. More recently, I tried the Goodreads iPhone app for scanning books into Goodreads and then used @Kiwidude's Goodreads Sync plugin to add the books to Calibre.

Dave.

[Statch]

Unless I misunderstood the things i read about the Cuecat (very possible!), you have to physically modify one of the chips to 'confuse' it. It sounds like it's simple enough to do but I'm not sure I'm up for it. I had thought about using the Cuecat to input my print books into Librarything, then export the library file and import it into Calibre, but I'm not sure it would be any quicker than the way I'm doing it since I'd have to adjust the metadata on one end or the other anyway. I have to think more about that and the GoodReads idea (which is a great idea).

Thanks very much to everyone for the responses.