searching for books on the go

[curious]

Hi,

I've been searching for a solution to this problem for some time. Here is my
setup:

Home desktop machine, current calibre, library with ~3000 books
Sony PRS t1 with said books onboard (32gb microSd)
Nexus 7 with 32gb

Requirements:
Simple way to browse library on the go and choose next book

Restrictions:
Not prepared to carry desktop around to access calibre
No network/internet access on the go so no remote calibre
Impossible to browse library easily on ereader
Yes understand can't have hierarchical directory structure
as per sticky and FAQ
Not prepared to read on backlit screen
Not prepared to waste space on nexus hosting all the books when
they're already on Sony (so no leger calibre app)


The solution would maybe a calibre catalogue on the nexus, but
having just tried that the resultant 20mb epub catalogue happily blows up
Cool Reader every time. Converting it to HTML results in a catalogue that
takes an age to load and is basically unusable.

Is there a known solution to this?

So what I'm basically looking for is a way to easily and quickly search my
Calibre library without network access and without lugging a laptop around.
I already have the actual content on an e-ink device, ready to read.

Thanks in advance :-)

[kovidgoyal]

Create a catalogue in csv format, and use a spreadsheet app on your device.

[curious]

Hi again,

nice one, that hadn't occurred to me as I hadn't noticed the CSV export option, thanks. I must admit, I'd missed an important point in the sticky:

"Known Issues

Depending upon the size of your library, and the Sections you include when generating a catalog, it is possible to create a very large ebook which can overwhelm your ereader. If you observe sluggish performance or even crashes when browsing your generated catalog, consider reducing the size of the generated catalog by eliminating Sections or splitting up your library into smaller catalogs."

although if I export as a CSV I can take it from there in the database app
of my choice I guess. Happy days ! Should I come up with the ideal
combination of DB app and view I will report back.

Not really fussed about cover images, but any suggestions how I might import
these as well ?

[MartyTX]

Hi curious,

Okay, you've got me curious .

A basic epub catalog (author, title, series) without cover thumbs should be under 500 KB for ~3000 books. A 20 MB catalog is huge!

What do you typically save in a catalog?

Marty

[curious]

Hi Marty,

I guess it's the cover images that are pushing the size up. The library is 2809 books and the epub catalogue calibre produces with the default settings is 23 Mb.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by curious

Requirements:
Simple way to browse library on the go and choose next book

Restrictions:
Not prepared to waste space on nexus hosting all the books when
they're already on Sony (so no leger calibre app)

You have been given a great solution in creating a catalog using the csv format. Personally I would have thought the genre and collections feature on the Sony would have sufficed for that device.

If not for the restriction listed above I would have suggested using Calibre Companion (CC). I have 2112 books on my Nexus 7 and CC is an amazing app for having the complete metadata from your calibre library and the ability to search using the same search you would in calibre. Clicking on any book gives you a detailed metadata book jacket describing the book and giving you access to the information from any custom columns you have set up in calibre.

I'm guessing you might be able to delete your books from your Nexus after the initial transfer of books and metadata leaving only the metadata and an excellent way of viewing exactly the kind of information you are after, but you would have to contact the developer to know for sure.

[MartyTX]

Hi curious,

I generated a catalog with the Descriptions option selected, and you're right: a monster epub catalog is created if you have a lot of books and you want full descriptions and thumbs.

The NOOK Simple Touch has a VERY SLOW internal book catalog. The calibre epub catalog is much faster for a large library. However, I care only about author, title, series and the custom column that lets me know if I've read the book already.

Marty

[chaley]

Originally Posted by DoctorOhh

If not for the restriction listed above I would have suggested using Calibre Companion (CC). I have 2112 books on my Nexus 7 and CC is an amazing app for having the complete metadata from your calibre library and the ability to search using the same search you would in calibre. Clicking on any book gives you a detailed metadata book jacket describing the book and giving you access to the information from any custom columns you have set up in calibre.

I'm guessing you might be able to delete your books from your Nexus after the initial transfer of books and metadata leaving only the metadata and an excellent way of viewing exactly the kind of information you are after, but you would have to contact the developer to know for sure.

Yes, you can delete the books after transfer. CC won't know you did that, and won't care unless you try to read the book from CC.

Note that even without the book files metadata updates will still happen on connect, so the info for books in the "catalog" will be up-to-date as of the last connect to calibre.

[curious]

Originally Posted by chaley

Yes, you can delete the books after transfer. CC won't know you did that, and won't care unless you try to read the book from CC.

Note that even without the book files metadata updates will still happen on connect, so the info for books in the "catalog" will be up-to-date as of the last connect to calibre.

Hi,

is there a way to drop my library on the nexus, already minus books (I have it ready on a USB key) instead of synching wirelessly and removing the book files afterwards?

I've discovered I can just take metadata.db from my PC's calibre library, drop it on the nexus and have the 'leger calibre' app find it, which then lets me search on the go by author, title, series and tags, which is already a huge improvement on my previous situation. But having played with CC, and grabbed a couple of books from the content server, CC's abilities look pretty neat - notably I get thumbs, and which number in a series the book is.

I could do the wireless synch and delete the book files afterwards, but I thought I'd check first, as manually deleting them on the nexus might prove to be more of a pain than a recursive find-and-delete on eBook file types beforehand.

Thanks so much for everyone's help with this so far, hopefully I won't be the only person this sort of thing is of use to :-)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by curious

is there a way to drop my library on the nexus, already minus books (I have it ready on a USB key) instead of synching wirelessly and removing the book files afterwards?

No. The only way to get books into CC is syncing using either the content server or the wireless device driver.

But having played with CC, and grabbed a couple of books from the content server, CC's abilities look pretty neat - notably I get thumbs, and which number in a series the book is.

You get all the metadata in your calibre library, including custom columns.

I could do the wireless synch and delete the book files afterwards, but I thought I'd check first, as manually deleting them on the nexus might prove to be more of a pain than a recursive find-and-delete on eBook file types beforehand.

It isn't hard to delete all the books sent to CC. Assuming you haven't changed the default folder "Calibre_Companion" then simply delete that folder. CC will re-create it when it needs it.

One possibility that might not be obvious: you can tell CC to separate book formats (book types) into different folders. Using this feature you can easily keep and read book formats on your N7 that the Sony can't handle, such as .mobi and .cbr (don't think the sony can handle these). Put the formats you want to keep into a folder separate from the ones you want to delete. From time to time delete the folder containing the formats you read on your sony.

[curious]

Ah, so it's straightforward to delete the content, that's great, I was imagining a layout with each book in its own subdirectory, I'll give it a go. As for seperating the formats into different folders, the reason I don't read on the nexus is more about the screen than a storage space issue - given the choice I vastly prefer reading books on an e-ink screen to a backlit one, quite apart from the battery life issue. This feature might well be handy if I integrate my comics collection into calibre though, so thanks for the tip.

Thanks for your prompt response.