Automatically Assigning Tags To an Author

[beaLollina]

Hi everybody, I was wondering if it would be possible to automatically assign tags to an author (for example: nationality, genre, or other things) in a way that every time I fill out the author of a book, default tags are automatically assigned to it. Is there a way to do it?

[BetterRed]

AFAIK - not automatically. But there maybe a plugin that can do it, see ==>> Index of plugins

However, if you created an empty book titled "Metadata" for each Author with a set of metadata (e.g. Language:French; Tags:Melodrama, 19th Century; etc), then after adding a book by that author you would press Alt+A to list that authors books and use the Metadata Copy and Paste options to duplicate the metadata from the "Metadata" book to the book just added. This will replace any existing values.

To make it easy, I have the Keyboard Shortcuts for Metadata Copy and Paste options set to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V respectively. And I had to set the Exclude fields when copy/pasting metadata tweak appropriately.

BR

[beaLollina]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

AFAIK - not automatically. But there maybe a plugin that can do it, see ==>> Index of plugins

However, if you created an empty book titled "Metadata" for each Author with a set of metadata (e.g. Language:French; Tags:Melodrama, 19th Century; etc), then after adding a book by that author you would press Alt+A to list that authors books and use the Metadata Copy and Paste options to duplicate the metadata from the "Metadata" book to the book just added. This will replace any existing values.

To make it easy, I have the Keyboard Shortcuts for Metadata Copy and Paste options set to Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V respectively. And I had to set the Exclude fields when copy/pasting metadata tweak appropriately.

BR

Thanks for the suggestion, you found a very curious method to assign author based's metadata. I don't think I'll go for it, for now I just assigned nationality by creating a new custom column of tags, used in combination with user categories for now it works fine! thanks though, it's a valid option, maybe for bigger libraries.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by beaLollina

Thanks for the suggestion, you found a very curious method to assign author based's metadata. I don't think I'll go for it, for now I just assigned nationality by creating a new custom column of tags, used in combination with user categories for now it works fine! thanks though, it's a valid option, maybe for bigger libraries.

Thanks for letting us know you have a solution.

I tried the User Categories approach, but it wasn't suitable for me because the User Categories plugin doesn't support custom columns.

I must confess I don't use the Metadata Copy & Paste technique on my Books library. I use it on my Media and Journal libraries, which have less than 200 and 50 Authors respectively. This makes it easy to find a 'real book' by the same Author with the metadata I want to apply to the 'book' just added.

BR

[jbacelar]

I have created a csv catalog with authors and nationality (which I update when a new author appears with his nationality).
When I introduce new books into Calibre, I use the Import CSV File to Update Metadata feature from the Job Spy plugin.

[beaLollina]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Thanks for letting us know you have a solution.

I tried the User Categories approach, but it wasn't suitable for me because the User Categories plugin doesn't support custom columns.

I must confess I don't use the Metadata Copy & Paste technique on my Books library. I use it on my Media and Journal libraries, which have less than 200 and 50 Authors respectively. This makes it easy to find a 'real book' by the same Author with the metadata I want to apply to the 'book' just added.

BR

Hi, I'm sorry, think I have misspoken a little, I'm using the Categories Browser (Tag Browser): for now I'm using cross searches a lot, by clicking on a specific category item (tags, author or other values), and add or exclude other items from that search by clicking two or more times on them. It's a valid way to find books that already have been associated to tags, and my purpose was to find a solution for adding tags based on author features.
So I created just one column for the nationality, that's useful cause now I have a new category automatically filled with every value I put in this column. This helps a lot, doesn't solve the adding values problem though. I'm not sure I will create other columns for author's historic period activity, for example, I have a category for that, tag-based.

I checked out the method you suggested for copyng metadata, it's been a little tricky but I finally got it, the hard part is to add literally every field of metadata that you don't want to include on the copying process, because even author sort and title sort are included in this thing, and I'm not sure my list of excluded fields is complete at 100% I don't like the idea to overwrite fields that I'm not even aware of.

[beaLollina]

Originally Posted by jbacelar

I have created a csv catalog with authors and nationality (which I update when a new author appears with his nationality).
When I introduce new books into Calibre, I use the Import CSV File to Update Metadata feature from the Job Spy plugin.

Interesting, thanks for the suggestion. Does it overwrite existing metadata or just append the new default ones to them? Is nationality a simple tag or a specific column?

[jbacelar]

Originally Posted by beaLollina

Does it overwrite existing metadata or just append the new default ones to them? Is nationality a simple tag or a specific column?

Nationality is a custom column, and the values (if any) are overwritten in the process.

[beaLollina]

Originally Posted by jbacelar

Nationality is a custom column, and the values (if any) are overwritten in the process.

Thanks, but this would be not very handful if I need to apply new default tags author-based to already existing tags. Maybe would be better (in my case) with a new column just for author's attributes.

It would be nice to apply them by drag the author on a specific tag. It would be still a manual method, but faster. I would create a category with every single author's possible attribute (nationality, activity period, sometimes even genre, literature's type, if all his books are classic or not, even used style, or target of readers)

I looked for ways to solve this aspect with this method, I found 2 drawbacks: Authors can't be dragged on tags , and opening list Author for this purpose is impractical, would be better have the author list aside the category items, to drag authors on them. Wouldn't this make things easier? After that, every book with that author would inherit default attributes. Maybe I'm describing something that is already possible in some other way, I don't know!

[BetterRed]

@beaLollina

These are the standard columns I exclude from Metadata Copy/Paste -- 'authors', 'author_sort', 'title', 'title_sort', 'pubdate', 'timestamp', 'cover'. I also exclude some custom columns, but they're specific to my Media and Journals libraries.

In this thread ==>> how to write enable calibredb on mac osx the OP mentions the LazyLibrarian program. It may be of interest to you - caveat, I think it is only available for Linux or MacOS.

I keep Author information in Evernote notes, see ==>> Calibre and Evernote. But, I don't copy any data from my Author notes into calibre library metadata columns. If an Author has an Evernote protocol link (evernote://blah-blah) in the Link field, when I click on Author name in Book Details that Author's Note is popped by Evernote.

BR

[beaLollina]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

@beaLollina

These are the standard columns I exclude from Metadata Copy/Paste -- 'authors', 'author_sort', 'title', 'title_sort', 'pubdate', 'timestamp', 'cover'. I also exclude some custom columns, but they're specific to my Media and Journals libraries.

In this thread ==>> how to write enable calibredb on mac osx the OP mentions the LazyLibrarian program. It may be of interest to you - caveat, I think it is only available for Linux or MacOS.

I keep Author information in Evernote notes, see ==>> Calibre and Evernote. But, I don't copy any data from my Author notes into calibre library metadata columns. If an Author has an Evernote protocol link (evernote://blah-blah) in the Link field, when I click on Author name in Book Details that Author's Note is popped by Evernote.

BR

Wow, this is a nice way to integrate Calibre with Evernote, thanks for the advices and the info. I got 24 fields to exclude and I fear they might be others hidden somewhere The first time I copied and pasted metadata I was impressed by how many things were changed. That's why for single books I prefer Alt+M to merge just additional metadata.

[BetterRed]

You can get a list of custom columns with the calibredb custom_columns command, or there's a tool in the JobSpy plugin,



I've never mastered the Merge feature, it always does the opposite of what I want

BR