[GUI Plugin] LibraryThing Match

[Bradles]

LibraryThing Match (the test version attached to the second post) now includes the ability to add books to calibre directly from the LT Match screen.

A single click of the "Add >>" button will add a blank e-book to calibre, using the title, author, cover*, ISBN (if present) and book id from LibraryThing. Not surprisingly, these books appear as "Matched" straight away.

If there's an unmatched book in the same row in the LT Match screen, it will be moved to the first blank row.

* The cover is the approx. 200x400 cover image returned by the LT API. It is useful as a placeholder until you update metadata.

Summary of other changes:

• The process is a bit more LibraryThing-centric, with LT books on the left and calibre books on the right.
• The list is constructed from a single table instead of three separate tables. This is largely irrelevant to users, but may give rise to some strange behaviours.
• The LT sort order is preserved, which means calibre books are not loaded until LT books are loaded, with "matched" calibre books appearing next to their LT counterpart. When selecting a pair of books to match, the calibre book is moved instead of the LT book.
• The caption above the calibre side of the list includes the virtual library (if active) and/or "(filtered)" if a search is active. (Displaying the virtual library only works in calibre 9+.)
• Added an option to match using ISBN first. An exact match on ISBN will bypass the fuzzy matching process. This option is on by default.
• Improvements to the fuzzy matching algorithm, for example early exit if a 100% match is found.

To update the plugin and test, follow the instructions in the second post.

[maddz]

I use Other Call Number in LT to store the calibre book ID as 'Calibre nnnnn' (left-padded 5-digit text number; I did it like that because of sorting and a number without a descriptor in that field is pretty meaningless).

Is there any way to add a check to make sure the numbers match?

I only put ebooks in Calibre, never pbooks or anything else.

[Bradles]

Originally Posted by maddz

I use Other Call Number in LT to store the calibre book ID as 'Calibre nnnnn' (left-padded 5-digit text number; I did it like that because of sorting and a number without a descriptor in that field is pretty meaningless).

Unfortunately, LT does not include the call number in their API. They won't make any changes to the API until they've finished the LibraryThing redesign.

You can see the full list of columns if you double-click a LT book on the left side of the list. Nothing looks useful for your purpose.

[maddz]

Originally Posted by Bradles

Unfortunately, LT does not include the call number in their API. They won't make any changes to the API until they've finished the LibraryThing redesign.

You can see the full list of columns if you double-click a LT book on the left side of the list. Nothing looks useful for your purpose.

In which case I won't hold my breath. The redesign is taking ages...

[Bradles]

The test version attached to the second post has added ISBN matching as an option. Here's how it works:

• The ISBN supplied by the LibraryThing API is usually the 10-digit ISBN, even if you've entered a 13-digit ISBN.
• LTMatch will get the "isbn" identifier from calibre.
• if it's 13 digits and starts with 978, convert to a 10-digit ISBN.
• Compare the pair!

The option is on by default:

An exact match on ISBN will bypass the fuzzy matching process. This should speed up the matching process for large libraries, as long as your metadata is in order. And LTers always have their metadata in order
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