using Calibre to get metadata without moving books?

[tinear]

I am happy with the way my books are organized now:
c:\books\author_first_ letter\author-name
(no sub-folder for each of 70000 books). But I would like to have Calibre or some other software get the metadata and covers from on-line and have them in a database. Is this possible?

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by tinear

I am happy with the way my books are organized now:
c:\books\author_first_ letter\author-name
(no sub-folder for each of 70000 books). But I would like to have Calibre or some other software get the metadata and covers from on-line and have them in a database. Is this possible?

Calibre doesn't move books, it copies them. If you're asking if you can have all the features of Calibre, without allowing it to make that copy, the answer is "No." If you're asking if you can have Calibre save them out after it has made a copy with the same folder structure you have now, the answer is "Yes." If you are asking if you can use Calibre as a database, with no books in it, but downloaded metadata and titles, etc. the answer is again "Yes," but I don't know why anyone would want to do that.