folder and file organization on computer

[theducks]

Originally Posted by John F

One Year.

That's like 6 months worth of purchases.

I am slowing down in my old age


Still, 50 is many times better than some of the people I meet who read only1 or 2 books a Year

[silverraven]

Originally Posted by AnemicOak

When I started out I had an eBooks folder on my computer with 26 "letter" folders insider that and then author folders Last Name, First Name inside those. It worked pretty well for quite a while, but eventually I found dumping everything in Calibre and using that as my book repository worked better for me. Being able to look not just by author, but by title, series and any tags I've chosen to set (all of my tags are genres) and have an easy read y/n column plus an approximate word count all together makes my library work well for me using Calibre. Having conversion and editing tools right there in the same software package is another bonus.

You're at a good place to start a Calibre library and lay down some ground rules for yourself on how you want to do things before your library grows larger and it takes you days instead of a few hours to get tags and series info in place (if you want them that is).

This! I agree 100%. Start using Calibre now, it makes it much easier in the long run.
I recently found an old USB drive that I had backed up all my ebooks at one time. The alphabet method is exactly how it was organized! I wonder if it is a natural progression for ebook buyers? One Dump Folder --> Alphabet Folders --> Calibre.
S

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by PeterT

What happened to treating members with respect? Sure it's a small collection, but so what... You all started some where.

No disrespect meant, at least not from my side. Just having some fun, seeing someone new to e-reading who still thinks having 50 books is a lot, and thinking back to the time when I still hadn't passed the 100 mark

Everybody starts somewhere, but in a few months (or a year or two), I'm sure the OP will have acquired at least 200 books. I know I did I acquired over 800 books in 4 years... bought everything I could think of that might be interesting to read someday, mainly because *now* books can be un-DRM-ed.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Be nice now. 50 books is right at that point where you start needing a good way to organize your collection.

I know Back then, I also thought that 50 was not a lot of books. It isn't. Worse, I thought that organizing them could wait for a bit.

It's not for nothing that I also posted how he/she can get the collection organized into calibre, even if it's only 50 books. Starting early is good; I didn't, and at some point I had 600+ books to tag and fix. That was *a lot of work*. It would have been better if I *HAD* started immediately, when I only had 50...

[svenlind]

Originally Posted by theducks

50?

That is one years worth of purchases

On the other hand, he has probably read all of them

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

No disrespect meant, at least not from my side. Just having some fun, seeing someone new to e-reading who still thinks having 50 books is a lot, and thinking back to the time when I still hadn't passed the 100 mark

Everybody starts somewhere, but in a few months (or a year or two), I'm sure the OP will have acquired at least 200 books. I know I did I acquired over 800 books in 4 years... bought everything I could think of that might be interesting to read someday, mainly because *now* books can be un-DRM-ed.

50 books is the right point to start thinking about having a properly organised collection with good metadata. Good on him for asking about it at this point! Checking, I see that I currently have 10,628 books in my Calibre library. I never made a better decision than to start organising them in Calibre those many years ago that the number was a little more manageable.

[dwig]

Originally Posted by HarryT

50 books is the right point to start thinking about having a properly organised collection with good metadata. Good on him for asking about it at this point! ...

+1

Long ago, in a galaxy far away ... I managed my growing ebook library manually. This worked well for a time and while the library was smallish. I sorted ebooks by format (txt, rtf, PalmDoc, TomeRaider, Plucker, MobiPocket, ...) and kept all unread duplicated in a folder for loading on my device.

I began using calibre back in the v0.n days, but only as a format converter at first. Even though my library is still somewhat modest by MREA* standards at some 1700 ebooks, calibre has become the library manager as well. It's a great tool for managing the library and finding books.
__________________________
*MREA = MobileRead Ebook Adict

[Sirtel]

When I started with e-books, I used Calibre for de-DRMing only and naively didn't organize my books at all, just dumped them in the Books folder on my PC. But as my collection grew to several hundred in only a few months, I fortunately realized my mistake and started to use Calibre for managing my books. I've never regretted it. I have several thousand books now and I would be unable to find anything if not for Calibre. Often I remember neither the title nor the author of a book and have to use other search parameters to find it.

[barryem]

I don't see anything wrong with a bit of friendly chiding. Anyway I have a feeling I have the most books so you can all consider yourself chided.

I just checked my ebooks folder and there's a count of 75,163 books. Probably there's a bit of duplication so my guess is there are about 70,000 separate books.

I've been collecting ebooks since long before they were called ebooks. I began years before there was a Palm Pilot and decades before there was a Kindle.

But I just want you all to know that I won't lord it over you. I'm sure you small fry are doing your best.

By the way, if any of you has more books than I do please contact me privately to be bribed to keep it quiet.

Barry

[Katsunami]

I can't even IMAGINE how I would go about getting 10.000, let alone 75.000 books short of just trying to rip down all public domain sites and trying to download all free books from Amazon and Kobo

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I can't even IMAGINE how I would go about getting 10.000, let alone 75.000 books short of just trying to rip down all public domain sites and trying to download all free books from Amazon and Kobo

A lot of them in my case are PDFs from academic journals, collected over many years.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

I can't even IMAGINE how I would go about getting 10.000, let alone 75.000 books short of just trying to rip down all public domain sites and trying to download all free books from Amazon and Kobo

I don't have quite so much, but in my case I've bought (or gotten free from Amazon and Smashwords) many cheap indie SF/fantasy books. If I read only books from the Big 5, then I'd have probably five or six times less books.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by ChipAHoy

I am on a Macbook. I went crazy with ebooks and now have about 50. Using apps like Calibre, Kindle for Mac, Kobo reader, etc. I have ebook files all over the place. Does anyone have their ebook organization on their computer set-up in a consistent and well-structured manner? I would like to try to organize all of mine and get ride of the many duplicate and unnecessary files.

As nearly everyone else has said, use calibre. It's free, stable, well-supported and widely used.

There simply no good way to organise books as files in folders on a disk. Whatever system you choose, you'll run into problems as soon as a book has any complications in its metadata (e.g. more than one author).

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

There simply no good way to organise books as files in folders on a disk. Whatever system you choose, you'll run into problems as soon as a book has any complications in its metadata (e.g. more than one author).

Yes, once your book collection gets to more than a few hundred books it's not storing them that's the problem, but rather retrieving them. You might have a vague memory that you have a certain book, but you can't quite remember what it's called or who the author is. Calibre allows you to "tag" your book collection and search it in all sorts of different ways.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, once your book collection gets to more than a few hundred books it's not storing them that's the problem, but rather retrieving them. You might have a vague memory that you have a certain book, but you can't quite remember what it's called or who the author is. Calibre allows you to "tag" your book collection and search it in all sorts of different ways.

I know that vague memory well. I posted about a fantasy book that I read long ago in the "name that book" thread a while back and never got a response. It was your basic Nordic fantasy. Three brothers, the two oldest of whom were fey (one had cloven hooves instead of feet). The youngest has various adventures and eventually is killed with Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge (I think he was the berserker who held the bridge). The two older brothers then avenge his death by killing the person who betrayed Hardrada and company. I could have sworn it was by Poul Anderson but now I can't find it. I don't know if I lost the book, or if it's just buried in the wrong pile of books.

[ChipAHoy]

What happens if I start tinkering with the folders? I did tweak them a bit, like, putting all my clippings and instructional publications into one folder.