Guide to Collections Management with calibre (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura)

[mengo]

I don't get the whole idea of shelves, they sound super but wouldn't it be better if they were implemented in the "BOOKS" subsection of "LIBRARY". I don't like how the contents of the shelves I've created are just scattered across all the other books I have.Especially if were talking about a series from many different authors. A total mess. It's like the shelves themselves are managed but why must the other non-shelved books suffer. Not every single book needs to go in a shelf.
I don't think shelves are intended for sorting by author in "BOOKS" titles are already sorted by author,... no need to populate the shelves with every other book you have in the library just to have them show in a directory manner like I said.
It's an advantage to have a shelf with a portion of an author's works, lets say all their short stories or essays, or a compilation from different authors' works.

But why not have the shelf appear grouped in the "BOOKS" category like a folder with an appropriate icon. By selecting it you would be brought to the according shelf.


illustration:

............................BOOKS................. ..............
by Author . . . . . . . . 1 -5 of 231 items
--------------------------------------------------
XXX Charlses Darwin
XXX On The Origin Of Species

XXX Herman Melville
XXX Moby Dick

OOO Jack London Short Stories <<<-- Shelf
OOO 72 items

XXX Mark Twain
XXX the adventures of H. Finn
--------------------------------------------------

there could be an option in the library settings "show shelves", or "shelves first"

Excuse me, I really don't see the point of shelves being like they are in firmware version 2.6.1.
If those small works were just single sheets of paper, one or two pages long (and don't even have proper covers) you wouldn't just shelve them between the other books. that's how I see it.

[compasspoint]

I'm trying to setup Shelves on my Kobo Glo using the example at the beginning of this post
{series}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}

It's creating a Shelf for Jame Patterson example:-

Alex Cross - 01 - Along Came a Spider

but immediately after the book name it puts the authors name

Alex Cross - 01 - Along Came a SpiderJames Patterson

and it also puts James Patterson in smaller font underneath the entry.

How can I get ride of the authors name at the end of the book title?

I've been trying now for a couple of hours but can't see how to do it I know it's probably someting simple.

[compasspoint]

Problem solved, just had to alter Metadata Plugboards Info and remove author from end of string.

[MissMaple]

Hi, I just found this thread in search of ways to improve my reading experience on my Kobo Glo.

This thread helps a lot, but I have a question.
I want books that are not in a series, stored on a shelf by language. If I get information from the Language column and have it displayed in the MyShelves column, it comes back as the Dutch abbreviation of the language. So in the column it says Dutch, but MyShelves would give me nld. (I have no clue why, since everything else on my computer is in Engish..)
Can you help me with some code saying: if MySelves=seriestitle, it should give me shelfname: seriestitle; if MyShelves=nld, it should give me shelfname: Dutch; and if MySelves=eng, it should give me shelfname: English?

I just cannot figure out how to get from nld to Dutch....

I hope this is possible, because nld is a very ugly shelfname ;-)

Thanks for looking into it :-)

[PeterT]

Try this

{#myshelves:'switch($,'seriestitle',field('series'),language_strings($,0))'}

Remember custom fields need to begin with a lower case letter

What this says is

If the field myshelves is 'seriestitle'
  return the value of the field series
else
  return the language associated with the field myshelves

From the manual

language_strings(lang_codes, localize) – return the strings for the language codes passed in lang_codes. If localize is zero, return the strings in English. If localize is not zero, return the strings in the language of the current locale. Lang_codes is a comma-separated list.

[nietsnut]

I created my shelves as described in the first post. I side-load my epubs on the Glo and the shelves are created based on series and/or the myshelfs tags.
When I create a new shelf on my Glo and ad new books to it that are on other shelves, when ever I connect to Calibre the shelves that I created on the Glo are deleted. Also, when I ad a book to an other shelf on the Glo, this gets reversed when I connect to Calibre.

Will Caliber not sync form the Glo to Calibre?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by nietsnut

Will Caliber not sync form the Glo to Calibre?

No. It is only from the calibre library to the device.

[auspex]

But why do the shelves created on the device disappear? It doesn't seem necessary. Would it be a side-effect of deleting empty shelves?

[PeterT]

@auspex: There was some discussion recently on this. See Kobo Glo / Shelf syncing. This might answer your questions.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by auspex

But why do the shelves created on the device disappear? It doesn't seem necessary. Would it be a side-effect of deleting empty shelves?

I suppose the problem is this. The driver compares the shelves the books are currently on, to the shelves defined in calibre. If a difference is seen, how is the driver meant to know whether the difference has been caused by a change in the calibre definitions for shelving, or a manual change on the Kobo.

The implementation of the driver is such that ANY difference in shelving, the definitions in calibre are taken as master, and thus overwrite any changes on the device itself.

[auspex]

Originally Posted by PeterT

@auspex: There was some discussion recently on this. See Kobo Glo / Shelf syncing. This might answer your questions.

Well, that seems to be a discussion of the problem, but doesn't really answer the question.

Your next post, though, does. You're right. You could leave all the shelves alone, but then shelves would just keep getting things added to them and never cleaned up. I have to think about this - it should be doable.

[speakingtohe]

Perhaps if you have metadata set to manual, and added your books to the calibre library from the device and set the appropriate shelf field for them before sending any more it would leave them alone before?

Helen

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by auspex

Well, that seems to be a discussion of the problem, but doesn't really answer the question.

Your next post, though, does. You're right. You could leave all the shelves alone, but then shelves would just keep getting things added to them and never cleaned up. I have to think about this - it should be doable.

As PeterT said, the calibre library is the master. If it sees a difference in the shelves for a book in the library, it will update the device to match. But, it does not change anything for books not in the library. If you buy a book from Kobo or sideload it some other way, the shelves for the book won't change.

[tharra]

Adding my thanks for these simple instructions. All working like a charm for book series here.

[Tijntje]

Hi , would it be possible to add a custom string to the bookshelves?
I create bookshelves for series and authors with the following command in the plugin.
series, authors

Now in the Kobo they show up exactly as specified, but I would like to add a custom string in front of the authors and series like this:
Author: author name here
Series: series name here
That way I can easily distinguish between serie and author names.

Is this possible?