Getting organized! - Page 2

MickiTee · 08-29-2016, 05:08 PM

I've finally given up not using Calibre for library management and I've been loading my books for the last two months. Like others have said load the books in small chunks and clean up the metadata and covers as you go.

Make use of custom columns and Virtual Libraries and read the manual. It has lots of useful info and examples to allow you to organise you library how you want. And check the settings in the Tweaks option in Preferences.

And last, but not least backup regularly. This is probably the most important thing you should do.

jerryleejr · 08-29-2016, 05:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

This about a million times.

Says the woman with more cookbooks than most mortals have books...

JJ

jerryleejr · 08-29-2016, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

I came a bit late to the Calibre party, and had to add a lot of books. As Harry says, do it in pieces, making sure your metadata is just how you like it. Make sure to back up your calibre library. And use Calibre Companion on your reader. I have all 10k+ books on my reader, and am able to sort by tag, date read, date added to Calibre, etc. I am very happy (not as happy as I will be when the Cubs win the World Series, but pretty happy).

Debra

Calibre companion is new to me can you elaborate?... Oh and Go cubbies!

JJ

Cinisajoy · 08-29-2016, 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerryleejr

Says the woman with more cookbooks than most mortals have books...

JJ

This is how she knows.

DNSB · 08-29-2016, 06:12 PM

Moving to a Kobo ereader, you might also want to consider using FlightCrew and EpubCheck to error check your ebooks before sending them to the ereader (well, those without DRM). One item Kobo's software does not do well is deal with non-standard compliant ebooks. While either can be used standalone, my personal choice is Sigil with both installed as plugins so I open the epub in Sigil, run FlightCrew and EpubCheck on epub2 or EpubCheck alone on epub3 format epubs. If either does not return no problems found!, time to locate and correct the errors.

While the situation has improved with most publishers, there have been times when looking at the structure of an epub was enough to make me want to discuss standards compliance with the person who produced the ebook (or the software author ). By preference, the discussion would involve something lingering and amusing along the lines of boiling oil or molten lead.

jerryleejr · 08-29-2016, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

Moving to a Kobo ereader, you might also want to consider using FlightCrew and EpubCheck to error check your ebooks before sending them to the ereader (well, those without DRM). One item Kobo's software does not do well is deal with non-standard compliant ebooks. While either can be used standalone, my personal choice is Sigil with both installed as plugins so I open the epub in Sigil, run FlightCrew and EpubCheck on epub2 or EpubCheck alone on epub3 format epubs. If either does not return no problems found!, time to locate and correct the errors.

While the situation has improved with most publishers, there have been times when looking at the structure of an epub was enough to make me want to discuss standards compliance with the person who produced the ebook (or the software author who produced the software). By preference, the discussion would involve something lingering and amusing along the lines of boiling oil or molten lead.

Your making my head hurt Dave...

JJ

Cinisajoy · 08-29-2016, 06:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerryleejr

Your making my head hurt Dave...

JJ

Handing you some aspirin.
So now in terms of organizing, what are you thinking?
Just by author or genre or a combination of things?

jerryleejr · 08-29-2016, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Handing you some aspirin.
So now in terms of organizing, what are you thinking?
Just by author or genre or a combination of things?

It's was more just getting all my books in one place first, they unfortunately are spread out over different interfaces, but utimatley I'd like to possibly organize by genre. (I have no cookbooks)

JJ

theducks · 08-29-2016, 07:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerryleejr

Calibre companion is new to me can you elaborate?... Oh and Go cubbies!

JJ

CC is a Device (side) resident Companion (as its name implies

)
It hooks into Calibre (when connected) very snugly to make the MOST complete use of WHAT EXISTS IN CALIBRE.

GIGO still applies

no matter which program you use

Get your Metadata hammered into shape. CC won't gain you until that happens.

1) work in small batches (easier to locate stuff when things go wrong and less likely to choke and bomb out)

2)Fix Author and Title (series) IMMEDIATELY. You can work on the rest later

3) Always be kind/considerate to your Metadata (server) sources. We want to continue to be able to use them (for free). Again: Small batches are the kindest

Quality Check PI

Cinisajoy · 08-29-2016, 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jerryleejr

It's was more just getting all my books in one place first, they unfortunately are spread out over different interfaces, but utimatley I'd like to possibly organize by genre. (I have no cookbooks)

JJ

Well since you only have 1000 books, I am going to suggest you go ahead and do genres. It will make your life simpler down the line.

You may not have cookbooks but I will use my recipe collection as an example. These are from Reiman Publications and other places From 1992 to now.

When I started I just put them into simple categories. Main Dishes, Desserts etc.
About a year later, I discovered I now had a shoebox full and the simple categories no longer worked so I had to divide them down again. Let's just say the more the collection grew, the more it needed categorized. There are now about 12,500 recipes.

So don't be like me, plan ahead instead.

shalym · 08-29-2016, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Well since you only have 1000 books, I am going to suggest you go ahead and do genres. It will make your life simpler down the line.

You may not have cookbooks but I will use my recipe collection as an example. These are from Reiman Publications and other places From 1992 to now.

When I started I just put them into simple categories. Main Dishes, Desserts etc.
About a year later, I discovered I now had a shoebox full and the simple categories no longer worked so I had to divide them down again. Let's just say the more the collection grew, the more it needed categorized. There are now about 12,500 recipes.

So don't be like me, plan ahead instead.

The best thing about Calibre is that you can organize any way you want, and if you decide to organize by Genre initially, you can change to by author tomorrow, and by series on Wednesday, and then go back to Genre. It's just a matter of making sure all of the metadata is correct to start with.

Also, with regards to having all of your books stored in one place, Calibre does this by design. It doesn't matter where they were to start with, once they're loaded into Calibre, they will be stored in your Calibre library.

Shari

Manabi · 08-30-2016, 02:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HarryT

And add your books slowly to Calibre, correctly setting the metadata for each book as you add it. It's effort that pays rewards in the longer term.

That's what I've been doing, and I also convert books so I have everything at least in Mobi and Epub formats. I don't even use Epub right now, but if I ever need to I'll be set! I'm basically trying to plan for the future with that.

I didn't set up the metadata at first, but over time I realized I really needed the summaries for books, since I'd forget exactly what a book is about. And having the series info in there is also critical if you're planning to read a series in order. A bonus on that is I've discovered books and short stories that are parts of series I'd read, but I didn't know existed. So I found some extra stuff to read.

Sweetpea · 08-30-2016, 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cinisajoy

Well since you only have 1000 books, I am going to suggest you go ahead and do genres. It will make your life simpler down the line.

I never liked the genres path. I never know what genre a book is. It can be sci-fi, history, fantasy, alternate world, horror and detective at the same time. (person from the future creates a time machine (= sci-fi), travels back in time (=history), but comes in a slightly different world (= alternate world) with dragons (=fantasy), and zombies (=horror), where he has to figure out why there are dragaons and zombies there (=detective).

I'll just stick with my author and series with summaries.

HarryT · 08-30-2016, 03:41 AM

Me too. I don't use genres or tags in my Calibre library. I've never personally felt the need to do so.

pwalker8 · 08-30-2016, 06:21 AM

I think that most here use Calibre. I've been using it for a long time since I was using a Sony ebook reader and Calibre was originally written for that.

You can organize by a lot of different methods. There are multiple category fields. I use one category field for genre (SF, History, etc). One of the category fields allows multiple tags, so I use that for subgenres, i.e. History, Ancient, Greek. It's kind of ordered like the library without the numbers.

There is a lot of good advice in the thread, i.e. it's only as good as the data, so make sure the metadata is correct.

- Fix the names so that the same author is spelled the same way and the sort order is by last name
- Make sure that the series data is correct
- Keeping the read verse unread up to date
- Calibre supports to be read, I use that feature
- There is a reading list plugin for calibre which is pretty nice
- the DeDrm plug in is a must.

I usually leave books in date entered order, then use the filters (author, series, categories tags), but you can easily sort on any of the fields. I sort in different orders for different tasks. My normal work flow is,
-Add book (DeDrm plugin will remove DRM as it is added)
-download metadata and cover
-adjust Metadata to add series and category information and normalize other data (downloaded metadata is not always correct or in a normalized format)
-convert to epub or mobi as needed

You can either add small groups of books at a time, or load everything at once and use the read field to mark the books as you fix the metadata. I understand the small group of books at a time advice, but sometimes it helps to simply load everything up and play with it to get a feel for how you want to organize things. Definitely only do a download metadata on a few books at a time.

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08-29-2016, 05:08 PM	#16
MickiTee Guru Posts: 867 Karma: 4097942 Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: London, UK Device: Sony PRS-505, Pocketbook TL3, TL4, TL5	I've finally given up not using Calibre for library management and I've been loading my books for the last two months. Like others have said load the books in small chunks and clean up the metadata and covers as you go. Make use of custom columns and Virtual Libraries and read the manual. It has lots of useful info and examples to allow you to organise you library how you want. And check the settings in the Tweaks option in Preferences. And last, but not least backup regularly. This is probably the most important thing you should do.

08-29-2016, 06:12 PM	#20
DNSB Bibliophagist Posts: 48,175 Karma: 174315444 Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Vancouver Device: Kobo Sage, Libra Colour, Lenovo M8 FHD, Paperwhite 4, Tolino epos	Moving to a Kobo ereader, you might also want to consider using FlightCrew and EpubCheck to error check your ebooks before sending them to the ereader (well, those without DRM). One item Kobo's software does not do well is deal with non-standard compliant ebooks. While either can be used standalone, my personal choice is Sigil with both installed as plugins so I open the epub in Sigil, run FlightCrew and EpubCheck on epub2 or EpubCheck alone on epub3 format epubs. If either does not return no problems found!, time to locate and correct the errors. While the situation has improved with most publishers, there have been times when looking at the structure of an epub was enough to make me want to discuss standards compliance with the person who produced the ebook (or the software author ). By preference, the discussion would involve something lingering and amusing along the lines of boiling oil or molten lead.

08-30-2016, 03:41 AM	#29
HarryT eBook Enthusiast Posts: 85,560 Karma: 93980341 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: UK Device: Kindle Oasis 2, iPad Pro 10.5", iPhone 6	Me too. I don't use genres or tags in my Calibre library. I've never personally felt the need to do so.

08-30-2016, 06:21 AM	#30
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	I think that most here use Calibre. I've been using it for a long time since I was using a Sony ebook reader and Calibre was originally written for that. You can organize by a lot of different methods. There are multiple category fields. I use one category field for genre (SF, History, etc). One of the category fields allows multiple tags, so I use that for subgenres, i.e. History, Ancient, Greek. It's kind of ordered like the library without the numbers. There is a lot of good advice in the thread, i.e. it's only as good as the data, so make sure the metadata is correct. - Fix the names so that the same author is spelled the same way and the sort order is by last name - Make sure that the series data is correct - Keeping the read verse unread up to date - Calibre supports to be read, I use that feature - There is a reading list plugin for calibre which is pretty nice - the DeDrm plug in is a must. I usually leave books in date entered order, then use the filters (author, series, categories tags), but you can easily sort on any of the fields. I sort in different orders for different tasks. My normal work flow is, -Add book (DeDrm plugin will remove DRM as it is added) -download metadata and cover -adjust Metadata to add series and category information and normalize other data (downloaded metadata is not always correct or in a normalized format) -convert to epub or mobi as needed You can either add small groups of books at a time, or load everything at once and use the read field to mark the books as you fix the metadata. I understand the small group of books at a time advice, but sometimes it helps to simply load everything up and play with it to get a feel for how you want to organize things. Definitely only do a download metadata on a few books at a time.