Using Calibre to Manage Physical Books

[DJViking]

I have been using Calibre to manage my collection of eBooks. This has worked well. Using sources like Kobo and Google for Metadata and Images.

My physical book collection has grown considerably, to a point I wanted to manage it with Calibre. But that did not work so well.

It had a hard time finding metadata for the actual books.

Like this book I tried first to add:
Title: The Odyssey (Super Deluxe Edition)
Author: Homer
Publisher: Chartwell Books
Series: Chartwell Deluxe Editions
ISBN: 9780785849407

But Calibre found a different book of the same Title. Since I cannot get the picture from ePub or PDF, the Picture it presented to me was not of the actual book I had.

https://www.quarto.com/books/9780785...deluxe-edition

Adding Goodreads as source at least it could get some metadata right, and it did not present a different books ISBN, but it was missing much like (publisher, series, translator). I has usually disabled Goodreads because its metadata is terrible, and description poorly formatted.

Are there any other sources which will be better for physical books?
Or does Calibre not work well for physical books management?

[theducks]

Back when I first started with Calibre, I documented my paperback collection.
Many were so old (cover price 35cents ), the did not even have a (printed) ISBN.
I would type in the Title and Author, slap the book on my flatbed scanner (HP 4C) and use that output (scaled 50%) as the cover when a search did not find one (or it was a newer edition).
Now-a-days, we have phone cameras with decent DPI, So why not take a picture, Calibre has a crop tool built into the cover section of the MDE, so all yo need as Light and a way to keep the camera square with the book.

[gbm]

DuckDuckGo found it first try.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=9780785849407&ia=web

https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Super.../dp/0785849408

Some time it is easier and fast to find metadata using a search engine.

bernie

Originally Posted by DJViking

I have been using Calibre to manage my collection of eBooks. This has worked well. Using sources like Kobo and Google for Metadata and Images.

My physical book collection has grown considerably, to a point I wanted to manage it with Calibre. But that did not work so well.

It had a hard time finding metadata for the actual books.

Like this book I tried first to add:
Title: The Odyssey (Super Deluxe Edition)
Author: Homer
Publisher: Chartwell Books
Series: Chartwell Deluxe Editions
ISBN: 9780785849407

But Calibre found a different book of the same Title. Since I cannot get the picture from ePub or PDF, the Picture it presented to me was not of the actual book I had.

https://www.quarto.com/books/9780785...deluxe-edition

Adding Goodreads as source at least it could get some metadata right, and it did not present a different books ISBN, but it was missing much like (publisher, series, translator). I has usually disabled Goodreads because its metadata is terrible, and description poorly formatted.

Are there any other sources which will be better for physical books?
Or does Calibre not work well for physical books management?

[BetterRed]

There are optional plugins with "Hardcover" in their name, see Index of plugins.

I don't use them, mainly because they didn't exist when I catalogued my existing physical books. And I don't mind cataloguing new physical books manually, mainly via copy and paste from publisher site.

Originally Posted by gbm

Some time it is easier and fast to find metadata using a search engine.

For me "All the time" - screen scraping is a hit-or-miss, imprecise kludge. A reminder of prettifying 3270 mainframe LOB applications 40 odd years ago….

BR

[DJViking]

Originally Posted by gbm

DuckDuckGo found it first try.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=9780785849407&ia=web

https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Super.../dp/0785849408

Some time it is easier and fast to find metadata using a search engine.

bernie

Easy, sure, but a lot of work when I need to do to if hundreds of books.
That's what I like about Calibre getting metadata from various sources.

[Karellen]

I use Calibre to manage and track my physical books and it works great.

It depends on how accurate you want your library to be. Are you happy to scrape the metadata for any edition of the book, regardless whether it is correct for your book? Or do you want to match the correct metadata to the actual copy you have.

I don't worry about online scraping. I tend to just manually add the metadata for the pbooks. It only takes a few minutes. At most, I might scrape another edition of the book, then manually update the metadata with the correct data for the pbook.

In my library, I tag my books either "ebook", "pbook" or "stub", so that way I can quickly filter the library. "Stub" are upcoming books that I want to buy, or books missing from a series in my library.

Sure, if you are starting from scratch, it is a lot of work, as it was for me. But I got there and it is something that needs to be done only once.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by theducks

Back when I first started with Calibre, I documented my paperback collection.
Many were so old (cover price 35cents ), the did not even have a (printed) ISBN.
I would type in the Title and Author, slap the book on my flatbed scanner (HP 4C) and use that output (scaled 50%) as the cover when a search did not find one (or it was a newer edition).
Now-a-days, we have phone cameras with decent DPI, So why not take a picture, Calibre has a crop tool built into the cover section of the MDE, so all yo need as Light and a way to keep the camera square with the book.

AI can manipulate the image.So if you take it not quite straight or need it adjusted, AI can do a rather good job.

[DJViking]

What is most important for me is getting the actual book cover for my edition.
Of the few books I have added already I got the images from my Book Store website. These images are not very high res.

[catsknit]

I manage my physical books using Goodreads. The mobile app has a barcode scanner so it's easy just to go down your shelves scanning in books, then tagging them with 'owned' or something that lets you know you have it in your collection.

[dunhill]

I have a custom column that depends on other columns using this template:

program:

my_formats = 'pdf,mobi,azw3,azw,cbr,cbz,m4b,epub,fb2';

if list_intersection(lowercase($formats), my_formats, ',') then

'no'

else

'Yes'

If the file doesn't contain any of the mentioned formats (i.e., it's an empty format), it will say 'Yes'. If the column title is 'physical', then it will tell me if it's a physical book.

[Karellen]

Originally Posted by DJViking

What is most important for me is getting the actual book cover for my edition.
Of the few books I have added already I got the images from my Book Store website. These images are not very high res.

Yea, that can be quite difficult, especially for older books.
In a lot of cases I had to scan the covers, then do quite a bit of work in photoshop to fix them. On some I spent hours.

Maybe you might find something here...
https://github.com/KarellenX/book-covers