Calibre Book Limit

[gussy]

Is there a limit on how many books Calibre can handle? I'm getting close to 150K.

[ownedbycats]

Theoretically, the maximum amount of books the database can hold is a ridiculously high number with a lot of digits. Functionally, it's limited by your RAM and storage space. Use 64-bit if you have a big library.

[DNSB]

For what it's worth, a SQLite data base can have up to 4,294,967,294 (2^32-2) pages with a maximum page size of 65536 bytes. Unless you happen to have a couple of spare 256TB (counting in 1024s, disk manufacturers love counting in 1000s so ~281TB) disks kicking around, you are likely to run out of disk space to store your ebooks long before calibre runs out of available entries in it's database.

[Quoth]

The practical limit is what you can read in a lifetime, assuming you are human.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by Quoth

assuming you are human.

Considering I keep failing CAPTCHAs, i'm not 100% sure on that...

[binaryhermit]

I mean, judging from your profile picture, you're a cat.

[ownedbycats]

No, I'm owned by cats.

[Sirtel]

I wonder who the cats think you are? Perhaps you should ask them?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by gussy

Is there a limit on how many books Calibre can handle? I'm getting close to 150K.

Wow. I've been buying ebooks since 2002, and I have (just) less than 5000 books in my calibre database. How do you find the time to get their metadata correct?

But to answer your question, I think the programatic limit will be at least a couple of orders of magnitude higher than your current total.

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Wow. I've been buying ebooks since 2002, and I have (just) less than 5000 books in my calibre database. How do you find the time to get their metadata correct?

"Just not bothering" is an option, though some people (cough) seem to be physically incapable of it.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

"Just not bothering" is an option, though some people (cough) seem to be physically incapable of it.

But if the metadata is wrong, how can you know what you have?

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

But if the metadata is wrong, how can you know what you have?

If you delete the books that you're unlikely to ever read or reference again you don't need to know.

In the past of course one could have given them away, taken them to a second hand bookshop, offered them on AbeBooks, or left them on a bus, park bench etc. Now we horde countless copies of non-fungible so-called digital-assets. Well not quite non-fungible, if one deletes them one can at least reuse the bits they occupied. Which is not unlike keeping the dust that gathers on dead tree books before you give them away…

BR

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

In the past of course one would given them away, taken them to a second hand bookshop, offered them on AbeBooks, or left them on a bus, park bench etc.

I remember trading in books at the two used bookstores in town. Then one of them closed down and the other one burned down. That (and the slow deterioration of my motor skills) accelerated my switch to digital books.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I remember trading in books at the two used bookstores in town. Then one of them closed down and the other one burned down. That (and the slow deterioration of my motor skills) accelerated my switch to digital books.

Just pet one of your cats to hear that motor.
(Had a cat with a second name: Miss Diesel .You could hear that rumble across the room )

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I remember trading in books at the two used bookstores in town. Then one of them closed down and the other one burned down. That (and the slow deterioration of my motor skills) accelerated my switch to digital books.

They're still going here - I can walk to two, and twenty minutes away on the bus are another three. The area I live in is the nearest we have to Berkeley or Greenwich Village - you'd probably be hard pressed to find a bookshop of any kind in the 'burbs.

Sadly Gould's Books Arcade is not what it was, on line order from a warehouse and pick up from small shop; the catalogue of what they had/have is not even 10% complete. Bob Gould died when he fell down the stairs after stacking books on the mezzanine floor of the original premises. His daughter and ex-wife carried on and the landlord kept the rent fixed at what became almost a peppercorn level. But eventually even that became unaffordable as they were swamped by torrents of Abbyyed and Tesseracted scans.

The old arcade had elevated pathways for Bob's cat:



BR