Search in ALL the libraries

[Terisa de morgan]

Hi,

I have different libraries because of the way I organize (or not ) my books. Is there any way I look for a book in all the libraries, not only at the library where I am at this moment?

Thank you in advance

[eschwartz]

No prepackaged solutions I believe, although the Find Duplicates plugin does this in order to show duplicates from other libraries.

Generally, it is recommended to use Virtual Libraries for organization purposes. Assuming you have criteria to select from of course...

[Terisa de morgan]

I was afraid I was going to get that response, so I'll go with my approach, nice old search in windows

And about virtual libraries, I define virtual libraries inside of those different libraries, any of them with different purposes, not covered at all only with virtual libraries.

[eschwartz]

Well, I can see how that might get hairy.

You should be able to make a plugin that searches all libraries, but I don't know if you would consider that worth the bother, assuming you have the necessary skillset anyway.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

Hi,

I have different libraries because of the way I organize (or not ) my books. Is there any way I look for a book in all the libraries, not only at the library where I am at this moment?

Thank you in advance

@Terisa de morgan - I doubt it, if your libraries are adjacent (ie in a common parent folder) you could do a text search on the OPFs. My file manager, xplorer², has text search capabilities - not good at multi-term searches though. File Locator Pro is pretty good and there's always grep.

The problem with a multi library plugin would be in presenting the results. Find Duplicates can compare library A (current) against library B on Title and Author and mark the books in library A that have duplicates in library B - but you can't eyeball the books in library B - unless you have another calibre running on another machine.

BR

[Terisa de morgan]

@eschwartz, yes, I could try to write the plugin but I'm afraid the effort (I would have to explore the way I should do it in calibre environment) doesn't worth the benefits I could get.

@BetterRed, it's easier. I only want to know if a book exists in any library according to the way calibre stores them, I don't need to search inside of opf files or to show all the libraries where it is. So, Explorer is find for it. And thank you, I'm going to search for the file explorers you mention.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

@eschwartz, yes, I could try to write the plugin but I'm afraid the effort (I would have to explore the way I should do it in calibre environment) doesn't worth the benefits I could get.

@BetterRed, it's easier. I only want to know if a book exists in any library according to the way calibre stores them, I don't need to search inside of opf files or to show all the libraries where it is. So, Explorer is find for it. And thank you, I'm going to search for the file explorers you mention.

Ahh - if you know the Title more or less, then File Locator Lite (more commonly known as Agent Ransack) and/or xplorer² Lite should do you nicely, and they're both free.

Ransack searching is faster than xplorer² searching, but the latter does a lot more than searching.

BR

[Terisa de morgan]

Yes, sorry for not having explained myself better I'm not looking for a fuzzy search, but knowing if I have a specific title - author at any of my libraries.

[BetterRed]

@Terisa de morgan - no apologies needed, or warranted

Fuzzy search, puts me in mind of fuzzy logic and the still unfulfilled promises of so-called expert systems 20+years ago.

Below is a screenshot of Ransack - one of the things it can do is to output results to a CSV which you can easily hack to make it suitable for use with the Import List PI. It caches 'stuff' so 2nd & subsequent searches are lightning fast.

Ransack will search contents of text, Office and PDF files. For simple things its better than Windows Search.

BR

[Terisa de morgan]

@BetterRed, thank you, it looks like a very interesting tool, I'm going to install it, because I think it can be very useful (and csv export looks promising). And yes, I've got the same feelings about expert systems (I studied them at the university around that time).

[Terisa de morgan]

Thank you for the information about Ransack, it's quite useful for my needs.