Best Practices: Libraries Or Folders to best organize books...

[kacir]

One huge library is the way to go.

Use metadata, tags, saved searches, advanced searches to display the desired selection of books.
Maintain metadata. For e-books that do not have metadata, Calibre can automatically download covers, blurbs, series info and other data just by pressing Ctrl+D. You can even configure what resources should be used, and even install plugins for resources in other languages.

Please note that many people have much more than 1000 books and use one library.

Some of the few reasons for having multiple libraries are:
- One library for each language you collect books in (like English, German, Spanish)
- Fiction vs work documents (collection of manuals for example, or perhaps cookbooks)
- One library with proper e-books and the other with pdf files
- Separate library for books that are not processed yet into main library. You add metadata, check formatting, download cover, ... and then move the book into main library. Even that one I would implement by using a tag "___Not_yet_processed" (preceded by underscores, so the tag is always displayed at the beginning of the list of tags)
- Separate library for manga, comics, fanfiction

When I want to move a large number of books to the reader I use "save to disl" function of Calibre, so I can create elaborate folder structure by authors and/or tags and updates epubs and other format that uses metadata with the metadata from the Calibre database. Then I use function "create catalog" to make a nice internally hyperlinked document with books, authors, series, covers, blurbs that I can open with an e-reader and search / browse library on the reader.
Please note I use an e-book reader that supports hierarchical directories.

But ... it is your computer, use it any way you find convenient.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by piperclassique

Virtual libraries are my preferred method, created based on a custom search. I don't find using tags all that helpful but I clean up the metadata as I import and liberate the books, add a category or more, find a nice cover, price paid, source, and who bought the book(self or husband) They get marked as read, together with any personal comments and a rating, also a note as to whether I want to read more in the series or by that author. About 12000 books, and it doesn't seem to run slowly.

I probably went just a touch overboard with the number of VLs when I had VLs for pretty much any searchable information in the main library. Most of which ended up never being used or being used so rarely that doing a search when/if I needed to was more efficient.

[ownedbycats]

I use a single library, split up into a couple of virtual ones. (Default, Physical Books, Documentation & Manuals, and Fanfiction. I also have VLs for Series and metadata cleaning.)

Advantages:
- I don't need to remember which library a specific book is in. I can just switch to All Books.
- No fuss about which library to put a book in if I have both the physical book and an eBook.
- A bit simpler to backup.

Disadvantages:
- If you're looking in the actual file structure, everything's kinda jumbled in together. For example, searching for a specific fanfic in Agent Ransack will also bring up my regular books.
- I have columns specific to specific formats (e.g. #fanficstatus, or #manualtype) that remain unused for other books. This likely bloats things a little more than necessary.
- While the custom categories that aren't applicable to the current VL are hidden, the VL-specific searches remain show.

[Gardenman]

This may not be the place to ask this. What is a Virtual library in Calibre. I never heard of one before and how do you use one?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Gardenman

This may not be the place to ask this. What is a Virtual library in Calibre. I never heard of one before and how do you use one?

Check Virtual libraries for more information. I tend to think of them as searches that restrict your view to a subset of the parent library.

[haertig]

I have one big library for "novels". That is a generic term, there are "short stories" in there as well. This contains both fiction and non-fiction, but due to my personal reading tastes, it is about 99.9% fiction.

I have a separate library for "reference books". These are textbooks, manuals, How To guides, books on computer stuff, ham radio stuff, cookbooks, travel guides, etc.

I have another library called "wanted". These are empty books that I might wish to purchase at some time in the future. I download all the metadata and cover art for them, so they appear just like a book would in my "novels" library - except there is no actual book to read. I'll use this library to hold later books in a series that I have started, but not purchased completely yet. Or for a book that has been announced, but not released yet. Basically a "don't forget about this book" memory area.