Clara New to the world of Kobo...

[Cleophauna]

I got my Clara yesterday and spent a lot of time browsing around the neighborhood. I got a few books transferred via Calibre, but am a little confused about some things.

1. Are shelves the same as collections?
2. Which driver should I be using in Calibre thekobotouch or thekobotouchextended?
3. Am I understanding correctly that to get calibre to create collections/shelves on the clara automatically I have to create custom columns in calibre?

I created collections based on the series of a group of books, but, I did that on the reader. Also, is there a way to remove books from the main list if they're listed in a collection?

I've given myself a headache reading and re-reading posts here and help files in calibre.

BTW I love this reader, so clear, easy to read on and light! Glad my Aluratek finally gave out. LOL

Thanks

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cleophauna

I got my Clara yesterday and spent a lot of time browsing around the neighborhood. I got a few books transferred via Calibre, but am a little confused about some things.

1. Are shelves the same as collections?
2. Which driver should I be using in Calibre thekobotouch or thekobotouchextended?
3. Am I understanding correctly that to get calibre to create collections/shelves on the clara automatically I have to create custom columns in calibre?

I created collections based on the series of a group of books, but, I did that on the reader. Also, is there a way to remove books from the main list if they're listed in a collection?

I've given myself a headache reading and re-reading posts here and help files in calibre.

BTW I love this reader, so clear, easy to read on and light! Glad my Aluratek finally gave out. LOL

Thanks

1. Shelves and collections are the same thing.

2. Use the Kobo Touch driver if you are sending epubs or have converted your epubs to kepubs using kepubify or other utility. You will have both kepub and epub in your calibre library (more space needed). Use the Kobo Touch Extended driver if you want to convert epub to kepub on the fly as they are sent to your Kobo ereader.

3. You only need a single custom column to create collections. That column can have multiple entries. See the Wiki entry Kobo Shelves and Collections for more on this.

Personally, I no longer use collections since I find that searching on author, title and series works for me. When I last used collections, I ended up with over 800 collections based on series and 240 columns based on my custom selections. At that time, the firmware on my Aura HD (2013-2014 time frame) was unhappy with large numbers of collections and I finally gave up using them. That was a few years back and calibre now show that I have 2053 series though many of those series contain a single book.

4. No, you can't remove a book from the library view -- collections are another view into the library much like authors (think of authors as automatically created collections if that helps).

[Cleophauna]

Originally Posted by DNSB

1. Shelves and collections are the same thing.

3. You only need a single custom column to create collections. That column can have multiple entries. See the Wiki entry Kobo Shelves and Collections for more on this.

4. No, you can't remove a book from the library view -- collections are another view into the library much like authors (think of authors as automatically created collections if that helps).

Well I guess that answers my most pressing questions. I have a tendency to over complicate things and the custom columns in calibre was boggling my mind.

Not sure how I'm going to handle things. I changed the name to include the series and index so that helps me keep my series together and I may just not use the collections feature if in the end it's going to be duplicated in the "My Books" list, if you get my meaning.

I really like the %read and unread feature. I tend to read multiple books at a time and then forget which ones I started.

[John F]

For 3, I thought you didn't need to use a custom column, for example, you could use the "tags" column. I am not overly knowkegeabke on Calibre, so verify my response.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by John F

For 3, I thought you didn't need to use a custom column, for example, you could use the "tags" column. I am not overly knowkegeabke on Calibre, so verify my response.

You are right, you don't need any custom columns to create collections. Any existing column can be used.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DNSB

3. You only need a single custom column to create collections. That column can have multiple entries. See the Wiki entry Kobo Shelves and Collections for more on this.

I guess I should have made this clearer. If you are only building collections based on existing columns (series, for example) you don't need to add a custom column.

[Ripplinger]

Originally Posted by Cleophauna

... I changed the name to include the series and index so that helps me keep my series together and I may just not use the collections feature if in the end it's going to be duplicated in the "My Books" list, if you get my meaning.

I do the same with all of my books through Calibre as well. But I still find that using Collections is invaluable also, especially now since newer firmware has a better Library layout, making it easier to get to and use Collections. It makes a shorter list to find the book series you want. Even though you could do it through the full longer list of books using your naming convention, it's quicker through Collections for me.

It's also incredibly simple to do through Calibre automatically while it sends books to the device. I'll admit if I had to manually put each book into a Collection on the reader, there's no way I'd bother. But with Calibre, it's automatic.

[Cleophauna]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I guess I should have made this clearer. If you are only building collections based on existing columns (series, for example) you don't need to add a custom column.

I went back and re-read the post you referred to and it finally got through my thick head. I'm still playing around with things to figure out the best way to sort things out.

[Derf]

Just to drop $0.02 on this thread, I have created a couple custom shelves in Calibre, thought I'd share for examples/ideas.

One shelf is called reading status, I have "To Be Read", "Reading" and "Finished". This helps me organize books into a general chronological order of what I am working to get to next, what I am currently working on (usually 3-4 at a time), and what I'm done with.

A second shelf is called Recommendation and it has "Reddit's favorite's books", "Mom's books", "Classics", "NY Times", "GoodReads". I end up with lots of books recommended from various sources, and like to know who/what reason they ended up in my collection.

I might add a third shelf that is called Genre. Currently Calibre has 'Tags' which populates lots of genre-like info, but sometimes it is sparse and sometimes it is too much. One book might having nothing, one might say 'Fiction', while another might say 'American Horror Fiction, Classic Ghost Stories, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Science Fiction'. All three books are basically Horror in my mind, but they won't be in the same collection on my device, so I'm thinking of starting a third shelf to organize by genre.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Derf

I might add a third shelf that is called Genre. Currently Calibre has 'Tags' which populates lots of genre-like info, but sometimes it is sparse and sometimes it is too much. One book might having nothing, one might say 'Fiction', while another might say 'American Horror Fiction, Classic Ghost Stories, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Science Fiction'. All three books are basically Horror in my mind, but they won't be in the same collection on my device, so I'm thinking of starting a third shelf to organize by genre.

I just cut down on tags like 'American Horror Fiction, Classic Ghost Stories, Epic Fantasy, Fantasy, Science Fiction' If it's horror to me, that's good enough.

[SallyK]

I think if you standardise tags on your books in Calibre, rather than leaving them as they come from the publisher, they can make for very useful shelves/collections - all my historical fiction on one shelf, all my Star Wars stories on another. If you don't you'll probably wind up with a lot of random shelves with only one or two books on.

My GloHD already has a function to tell me which books I've read, in the middle of, or haven't read yet, so I don't bother with a column for that.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by SallyK

I think if you standardise tags on your books in Calibre, rather than leaving them as they come from the publisher, they can make for very useful shelves/collections - all my historical fiction on one shelf, all my Star Wars stories on another. If you don't you'll probably wind up with a lot of random shelves with only one or two books on.

I used to use a few collections (SF, Fantasy, Mystery, Cooking, etc.) but gave up when they started to have too many books in them to be useful.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by SallyK

My GloHD already has a function to tell me which books I've read, in the middle of, or haven't read yet, so I don't bother with a column for that.

The thing about having that information in Calibre (as well) is that you can put the information back if it gets lost from the device (database corruption, factory reset, upgrade to new device etc). You can set it up to sync with your device each time you connect.

[compurandom]

You don't _have_ to create a custom column for on device collections, but it's a better idea to do that than to use the built in tags column. The problem is that when you import books, the tags column is frequently filled with excessive junk tags, sometimes even stupid things like the title of the book.

Rather than clean those out, it's better to make your own custom column and put only the tags you want into it, and then you also don't have to later regret that you cleared the original tags the book came with...