Calibre, Kobo and Collections

[Sir Loyne]

This may (or may not) take a while, so please bear with me.
I like that Kobo started offering the option to sort by series. In Calibre I have all of my books metadata filled in, including the series name and book number in the series. When I add books to my Kobo (Glo HD and Aura One) the series information isn't there. What I end up doing after I've added books to the reader is...

1. make a new folder for the series on the reader
2. move the books to the folder
3. plug my reader back into my computer
4. open Caliber
5. go to my device
6. highlight all of the books in the series on the device
7. open "Manage Series Information On Device" in KoboUtilities
8. move the books into the correct order and change the starting number back to 1
9. hit OK

This seems a bit excessive. My only guess is that it's because all of my books in the Calibre library are epubs and I have the Kobo Touch Extended Driver installed that converts them to kepub before transferring them, and for some reason the series information is being lost. Anyone else having the same problem? Anyone else have a different idea what's happening?

[patrik]

Have you read and done it according to this:
https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kob...nd_Collections
?

[John F]

I believe the Series information isn't added to the Kobo (database) until after you disconnect and reconnect the Kobo.

[Abtacha]

The Kobo needs to process the books first before Calibre can add the series information.
If you eject the reader after adding new books, wait until the books are processed and then connect it again the series information should be added, as long as Metadata Management is set to automatic.

[Sir Loyne]

Let me address everybody in one post...

patrik, I haven't looked at that information, but I will.

John F & Abtacha, I tried plugging the reader in after the processing was finished and I could see them on the reader, but that didn't add the series info.

Abtacha, I don't know if Metadata Management is set to automatic, I'm not sure where it is. I'll be looking into that, though.

Thanks for all of the ideas so far.

EDIT: I found something under preferences / sending books to device that mentions metadata management, but the way it sounds, it should be sending the metadata with any option you pick. I have it on manual (the default), and I don't know if changing it to automatic will move every book in my library to my reader. I wouldn't want that.

[PeterT]

Automatic just applies to metadata and is what needs to be set for series info to be copied on the second calibre attachment.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Sir Loyne]

Abtacham & PeterT,

While changing the option to automatic did in fact add the series information by plugging the reader back in and opening Calibre, what also happens is that all of my folders are emptied and I have top add all of the books back to them. Plugging the reader back in emptied the folders again. Of the two, I think mine is the lesser of the two evils.

Also, when I go into my device in Calibre, the Collections column used to list my collections. Now there's nothing there except to say what book I'm reading.

Putting the option back to manual keeps the books in their folders and the collections column is back to listing my collections.

Thanks for the idea though.

[PeterT]

You either need to manage the shelves via calibre or confugure the device driver not to manage collections.

Most of us just have calibre configured to handle all aspects of collection management and never perform any collection management on the Kobo itself.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PeterT

You either need to manage the shelves via calibre or confugure the device driver not to manage collections.

Most of us just have calibre configured to handle all aspects of collection management and never perform any collection management on the Kobo itself.

Actually, this one of us doesn't bother with collections. Search works quite well for me.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Actually, this one of us doesn't bother with collections. Search works quite well for me.

Same for me.

[PeterT]

Geez... Your use case still follows my statement; calibre IS handling your collection management and you're do nothing on the Kobo.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Sir Loyne

Abtacham & PeterT,

While changing the option to automatic did in fact add the series information by plugging the reader back in and opening Calibre, what also happens is that all of my folders are emptied and I have top add all of the books back to them. Plugging the reader back in emptied the folders again. Of the two, I think mine is the lesser of the two evils.

Also, when I go into my device in Calibre, the Collections column used to list my collections. Now there's nothing there except to say what book I'm reading.

Putting the option back to manual keeps the books in their folders and the collections column is back to listing my collections.

If you want the series info to be populated automatically, you need the metadata management option to be set to automatic. The other options will do it as well, but not for all the books, or only when sending a book. That means the series info might not be updated.

For your original process, there isn't really a need to move the books into a separate folder. But, if you that's how you want to organise the files, you can put the series into the save template in the driver and have calibre send the books there directly. The "Manage Series Information On Device" function in the utilities plugin is intended for books you don't have in the calibre library. If you don't use the driver to populate the series, you are probably better to use the "Update metadata in device library" function. This can update any of the metadata that the device displays from the metadata in the calibre library.

For the collections column, it looks like there is a problem when collection management is turned off and metadata management is on. I'll have a look at what is wrong. If you have the collection management on, but no options selected and no collections column, then it displays correctly and no changes are made on the device.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Geez... Your use case still follows my statement; calibre IS handling your collection management and you're do nothing on the Kobo.

Not quite right. Calibre does not handle my collections -- I have no collections other than the builtin shortlist collection which has no entries. I considered collections but most of what I looked at ended up as author or series collections. I read a small set of genres so a collection with 1300 science fiction, 1100 fantasy or 360 cooking related books is a bit useless to me when I can search by author or series which, in my testing, was a lot faster than collections.

And I would protest that I do not do nothing on the Kobo. I read on it thus helping it fulfill it's natural and ordained function.

[JSWolf]

Sir Loybe, plkease the the entire thread at https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=193184 and you will learn about collections with Calibre and Kobo.

[davidfor]

Jon: If you read the thread, there is already a link to the Wiki article about configuring collection management. Pointing to the old thread is not that useful.