What Customs Columns do you use in your Calibre Library?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

I'm utterly amazed by all the items people are registering for their books
However, I'm disappointed to see that nobody seems to care to register the cover design artist. And yet, the cover is most of the time the very first contact with any book. Curious.

If we were talking about a picture, for sure. If I'm talking about a book, as I'm not going to look for other books based on the cover design artist, I'm not going to investigate to get it.

[DrChiper]

Originally Posted by travger

Artist: Who painted cover and/or illustrations

I was mistaken, there *is* someone interested , my mistake!

[theducks]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

I'm utterly amazed by all the items people are registering for their books
However, I'm disappointed to see that nobody seems to care to register the cover design artist. And yet, the cover is most of the time the very first contact with any book. Curious.

Dr C
I just put things like that Under Authors:

Abby Church (trans) & Charles Schultz (Illust)

Calibre's Author_sort ignores the stuff in ( )

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

Just curious: There used to be some performance penalty on using lots of user defined columns. Does this still apply?

I don't think its as bad as it once was. Kovid and chaley did some re-engineering of the in-memory database a while back. I know it was after they implemented Virtual Libraries. Several users wanted a composite column that contained a list of the VLs that applied to each book; after the change their start up times went from tens of minutes to tens of seconds or better.

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by theducks

Dr C
I just put things like that Under Authors:

Abby Church (trans) & Charles Schultz (Illust)

Calibre's Author_sort ignores the stuff in ( )

I do similar, but in a custom column called 'Other Contributors', but only for illustrators, translators and foreword writers, not cover designers. I don't value the covers, I remove them from epubs before putting them on my tablet and I never use calibre's cover carousel or grid.

I'm initially 'attracted' to a book by its author or subject matter, never the cover, I read a lot of biographies, histories etc. The first thing I look at is the the blurb on the back or dust jacket flaps.

BR

[DrChiper]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

I'm initially 'attracted' to a book by its author or subject matter, never the cover, I read a lot of biographies, histories etc. The first thing I look at is the the blurb on the back or dust jacket flaps.

True, but for me any book comprises the whole: cover, back-page, blurb, pictures (if any) and text. Oh, and the smell of ink (still not yet a feature of ebooks, but who knows calibre might already think about that feature...).

Further, I did read once a whodunnit and the cover artist had cleverly hidden clues in the cover image, so yes, there the cover *did* matter.

That said: there are collectors who collect certain issues and re-issues of the same book and value the details of the changes in cover design.

But of course, YMMV which is a good thing.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by DrChiper

That said: there are collectors who collect certain issues and re-issues of the same book and value the details of the changes in cover design.

I have some books for which I keep sets of related images in a multi-image TIFF files (maps, diagrams etc). I use TIFF for this because some of the books already have a PDF or CBZ/R format file.

Cover collectors could do something similar, if they don't have comic formats they could zip the jpegs into a CBZ; some CBZ viewers (e.g. HoneyView) can display image metadata.

BR

[Inukami]

Thanks to everyone who has provided input. Everyone uses Calibre differently and some very different custom columns and some I have never thought to use. I started another post, What Custom Columns do you use in your Calibre Media Library(movies, tv shows, anime), which looks at using Calibre as a media library. Appreciate any input on that post as well if you use Calibre as a media library.

Inukami

[danhallock]

A few I haven't seen anyone else mention:

• Narrator(s): for audiobooks.
• Universe: Star Trek, Forgotten Realms, etc.
• Game System: I have RPG sourcebooks in here, so this holds the system(s) they apply to -- Pathfinder, D&D 5E, d20 Modern, etc.
• See Also: path to where related/bonus materials are on the file system. Some books I've Kickstarted have come with wallpapers or other digital assets, and some of the RPG books from Humble Bundles have separate zip files with tiles, maps, etc.
• Queues: tag-like field with values for each family member's reading lists. Used to also have a Homeschool queue when I was assigning homework to my kids.

Others have mentioned these or similar:

• Source: where I obtained the book. E.g. "StoryBundle.Dark Crimes" or "Humble.Audiobooks.Doctor Who and Torchwood by Big Finish" or just "Amazon". My favorite value for this field is "Kickstarted," I have a few of those. Supporting authors is the best.
• Processed? Yes/No (as in, have I cleaned up metadata and verified the file)
• Multiple Rating, Date Read, and Review fields for myself and my family members
• Version: this is mainly because sometimes I have multiple versions and I use this field to disambiguate them. For something like "2nd edition" I include that in the title, but if it's the same underlying source book but there were multiple digital releases, or for things like alternate covers of CBZ comics, I put information here because the rest of the metadata looks like a duplicate.

I might steal Subscribed, Awards and In Collection (for short stories). Y'all have good ideas.

[please55]

How do you guys easily manage a large number of custom columns in the book list view? Surely so many would cause overflow and involve left to right scrolling which I've found throws me off.

[fidvo]

Originally Posted by please55

How do you guys easily manage a large number of custom columns in the book list view? Surely so many would cause overflow and involve left to right scrolling which I've found throws me off.

I use the split view to keep the title column permanently visible when scrolling left-right, so I never lose track of the book I'm on.

I also use the View Manager plugin to help me divide my workflow into different tasks. For example, when I'm filling out series info, I have a view that puts the series and subseries columns up front. I have another view that puts the custom Path column up front. The same goes for looking up data. I have views for the columns I tend to search on often.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by please55

How do you guys easily manage a large number of custom columns in the book list view? Surely so many would cause overflow and involve left to right scrolling which I've found throws me off.

I hide the ones I am not interested in. Shrink others (just to see if occupied.)
I prefer the Information Panel (I), placed on the second monitor over opening the Details pane in the main view when I want the FULL nitty gritty

You can also rearrange the columns, so the ones you want to see the most, are close together

[please55]

Thank I wasn't aware of split view. Incidentally how do you do that? Couldn't readily see an option under 'Look and Feel'. (Hang on ...updating calibre, did some google-fu looks like its a right click on column header).

Working with a single monitor so I try to keep everything I need in one view. But I can definitely see using the View Manager more to help with workflows especially series which I might be using a hidden column for going forward.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by fidvo

<snip>

I also use the View Manager plugin to help me divide my workflow into different tasks. For example, when I'm filling out series info, I have a view that puts the series and subseries columns up front. I have another view that puts the custom Path column up front. The same goes for looking up data. I have views for the columns I tend to search on often.

View Manager is my #1 optional plugin, I'd be lost without it.

I have different libraries for books, periodicals, and media which have different custom columns, hence each library has its own set of Views. I also do all my metadata editing in the book list, so I have several Views in my Intake library that show and hide different columns depending on 'book' source and target library.

Added: the Home and End keys will move the list hard left and hard right, and Ctrl+Home and Ctrl+End will take you to the top and bottom of the list.

BR

[nqk]

Originally Posted by theducks

Dr C
I just put things like that Under Authors:

Abby Church (trans) & Charles Schultz (Illust)

Calibre's Author_sort ignores the stuff in ( )

How do you achieve this? In the tweak for Author_sort, I use 'copy'. What value do you use?

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