book already in database - only the title is checked

[cybmole]

i was going quietly crazy yesterday trying to add a book & diagnose why calibre was saying " book already in database - add anyway ?" - when various calibre & windows searches + library integrity checks proved that the book in question was NOT in the database.

I finally figured that the add books duplicate check looks only at title, not at title AND author - surely it should be checking both ?

I was trying to add Resurrection my Ken McClure. I already had a completely different book , also called Resurrection, by someone else.

Any human would immediately spot that the books were not duplicates of each other - can calibre not also spot that in future.

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Any human would immediately spot that the books were not duplicates of each other - can calibre not also spot that in future.

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess that this is deliberate. The natural next thing to compare would be author, but this would not cach the same author with/without an initial (how many variations have you seen of Wells, H. G.?), maybe multiple authors and so on. At that point it's better to just "fail" and show the popup (as you said, it's trivial for a human). Otherwise you will risk *real* duplicates without a warning, this is a bigger hassle to clean up.

A very minor improvement might be to list both books with authors in the popup in case you're adding a lot of books and don't know which one it's complaining about.

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by Man Eating Duck

...

A very minor improvement might be to list both books with authors in the popup in case you're adding a lot of books and don't know which one it's complaining about.

that would be much better.

[travger]

I would like to see that list too.
I have quite a lot of duplicates simply because the library does not show difference between already having the book and adding 2 formats simultaneously.

Several times I have added a book and seen it missing from the top of the list (where all newly-added books are), at first I didn't know to look out for it and so couldn't add metadata for the new format.

[Man Eating Duck]

Originally Posted by travger

I would like to see that list too.
I have quite a lot of duplicates simply because the library does not show difference between already having the book and adding 2 formats simultaneously.

It seems that there is a bug report on this issue already, there are also some comments. Let's hope it grabs someone's attention soon