Aura Show further metadata on "My Books" list

MicheleBS · 07-20-2017, 06:41 AM

Dear Forum,

last week my new Aura One finally arrived at home. These days I'm checking its features and settings.

I want to say that I am going not to buy books through Kobo Store: my aim is rather to manage my own e-books (bought elsewhere), and upload articles saved from the web and converted to ePub. I am used to edit the metadata with Calibre or EPubMetadatEditor, to customize sorting, title, cover, and to correct possible inaccuracies.

Anyway, on "My Books" list, by default the Title and the Author are shown by default. But I saw that some of the books uploaded in the last days also showed informations like Series and Index, that was very useful for me.

So I added the Series and Series Index entries also to other books and articles, but still they appear as before, only with Titleand Author.

I examined tha metadata on the ePubs showing such those additional info, but did'nt notice anything different from the other ePubs. Unfortunately, I removed them now, so that I can't post their metadata here, to help you deducing what makes difference.

In the end, do you know how to edit metadata so that Series and Index regularly appear in "My Books" list?

Thank you!

davidfor · 07-20-2017, 06:59 AM

The series information comes from Kobo for books downloaded from them. The calibre can maintain the series info when you connect the device. Unfortunately, it can't do this when sending a new book to the device. You need to let the device process the book and connect again for the series info to be updated.

MicheleBS · 07-20-2017, 02:59 PM

Thank you davidfor.

I'm afraid I don't understand, though.
The epubs I am referring to don't come from Kobo Store; I bought them elsewhere.

When I analyse the .epubs metadata inside my Aura One (I created a folder on my own), I see that they mantain informations also about Series, Index and other entries. But in the "My Books" list I can't see these additional details in evidence; I mean, sometimes I saw them, in the past, but I can't understand the logic under that showing/hiding, to replicate it.

I thought that using "Send to the device", in Calibre, erased the metadata, but I tried and verify: still the metadata own to the .epub .files. Another trying was to copy the .epubs directly to my Kobo pesonal folder, bypassing Calibre. No additional Series/Index metadata showing, neither in this case.

...

This wondering came only because I saw a couple of books showing such these precious additional infos, last days, and I would like to understand how to make them to regularly appear.

It would be great if I could use them to better describe the news articles and reportages I convert to .epub format from the Web: for example, in case of giornalistic reports consisting of multiple chapters, or several different posts from periodic columns. I would see the articles listed as follows:

Post title
Column title - Progressive number of the post
Author

Any suggestion?

Terisa de morgan · 07-20-2017, 03:37 PM

Yes. After you have sent a book to the device, disconnect the Kobo, allow Kobo to process the book and connect Kobo again to calibre. When the process finishes, the series will be in the book list.

davidfor · 07-20-2017, 07:37 PM

And if that doesn't work, the configuration needs to be changed. The KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended driver needs to have the option to update series info set, and in the "Sending books to device" preference, "Metadata management" needs to be set to automatic.

If that doesn't work, we need to do some debugging.

MicheleBS · 07-30-2017, 07:42 PM

Thank you Terisa and davidfor for your replies, and sorry for such a long time in mine.

I spent these days trying to better understand this matter of the metadata in the Aura One, and following your suggestions.

Sadly, I haven't found a solution yet: still I can't see other metadata in "My Books" list than Title and Author.

Click image for larger version

Name: Series-No.jpg
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ID: 158176

And it's strange, because these epubs do contain further metadata like Series and Series Index, that in some cases were shown, some weeks ago. In particular, I remember Il Cibo è Sacro by Dionigi Tettamanzi, Series i Corsivi n. 48, that I could view as follows, till some weeks ago:

Click image for larger version

Name: Series-Yes.jpg
Views: 219
Size: 68.0 KB
ID: 158175

And such a view was fine and useful, for me.

Then, after I made some changes, to make tests, Series and Series Index disappeared in the List also for this book. But still its metadata contains these entries, so I can't understand the reasons of the disappearing.

I edited metadata both 1) through Calibre and 2) bypassing it, making use of ePubMetadataEditor instead, a very very useful utility. In both cases, no success.

I have always ejected the device properly, waiting then for Kobo to udate the informations and reload the library, with the last changes. But no success.

...

Also it would be very useful if Calibre was able to assign the books to the desiderd Collections: I see that there's a dedicated column, "Collections", in the Calibre list of the books stored in Kobo, but if I add a Collection to a book, like it was a sort of Tag, after the eject all seems to be unmodified. Adding the name of a Collection in the "Collection" entry of a book, doesn't reflects to the Kobo, when we eject it. And the only way to assign a book to a Collection, is through the Kobo itself, which is somewhat uncomfortable.

I remind you that all these books don't belong to Kobo store: I bought them elsewhere and uploaded them manually.

Any other ideas? Tips?

Thank you!

davidfor · 07-30-2017, 11:17 PM

If you are not seeing the series info on the device it means one of a few things:
- The calibre configuration is not correct.
- The book does not have series information in the calibre library.
- The device has not been connected to calibre since the book was added to the device and processed by the device.
- When the device is connected to calibre, the book is not matched to a book in the library.
- Something is broken.

Based on my experience here, the most likely reasons are the first and the third.

The important thing is that the device does not read the series info from the metadata in the book file. The series info is not standard epub2 metadata. Hence, editing the metadata in the book with other tools won't help. The driver used by calibre to talk to the device updates the series info directly in the database on the device. Once that is done, and the driver is configured correctly, the series info will be displayed in the library lists on the device.

So, check the configuration. The driver needs to have the series info option set. Right click on the device button when the device is connected and select the configure menu item. The configuration dialog will be opened. Go through the options on the various tabs and find the series info option and make sure it is checked. Then go into the calibre preferences to the "Sending books to device" page. At the top is make sure that "Metadata Management" needs to be set to automatic. The next time you connect the device, the series info will be updated for all books on the device that match with books in the calibre library.

If the above doesn't work, I need to see a debug log from calibre.

For collections, calibre can manage the collections on a Kobo device. The collections column in the device list is what the device has reported to calibre as to the current collections for those books. The above instructions for the series info is effectively what you need, except for different configuration options in the driver. But, there are some instructions in https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kob...nd_Collections.

MicheleBS · 07-31-2017, 04:24 AM

Really precious, davidfor. Thank you.

I will test and then I will let you know!

MicheleBS · 07-31-2017, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidfor

- When the device is connected to calibre, the book is not matched to a book in the library.

Calibre would be able to show and manage the epubs that are stored in Kobo also without having a copy of the same epub in Calibre local library. But, for what we are speaking of (metadata, Series etc.) can you confirm that it is necessary to have the same book stored both in the Calibre library and in Kobo memory (two copies)?

DNSB · 07-31-2017, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MicheleBS

Calibre would be able to show and manage the epubs that are stored in Kobo also without having a copy of the same epub in Calibre local library. But, for what we are speaking of (metadata, Series etc.) can you confirm that it is necessary to have the same book stored both in the Calibre library and in Kobo memory (two copies)?

Calibre has a limited number of functions for books that are stored on the Kobo without a copy in your Calibre library so you might call that management. Right click on a book in Device view to see those functions. Metadata management requires a copy in your Calibre library for the metadata to be associated with. Metadata from the Calibre library book matching the book on the Kobo is what is sent to the Kobo database when updating the metadata on the Kobo.

I am rather puzzled as to why anyone would have a book on their ereader without also having a copy in Calibre. Think of it as the first stage in your backup/disaster recovery plan. Lose your ereader? The books are safely stored elsewhere. Personally, I keep my ebook collection in 4 places including two physical and one cloud backup. As the old IT saying goes: I know I'm paranoid, I just don't know if I am paranoid enough.

JSWolf · 07-31-2017, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MicheleBS

Calibre would be able to show and manage the epubs that are stored in Kobo also without having a copy of the same epub in Calibre local library. But, for what we are speaking of (metadata, Series etc.) can you confirm that it is necessary to have the same book stored both in the Calibre library and in Kobo memory (two copies)?

It is necessary to have a copy on the Kobo and in the Calibre library in order for the series information to be passed to the Kobo. After that, I do not know. But why would you delete the book from Calibre? Once you read it and delete it from the Kobo, you'd then have one copy if it was still in the Calibre library.

John F · 08-01-2017, 06:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

Calibre has a limited number of functions for books that are stored on the Kobo without a copy in your Calibre library so you might call that management. Right click on a book in Device view to see those functions. Metadata management requires a copy in your Calibre library for the metadata to be associated with. Metadata from the Calibre library book matching the book on the Kobo is what is sent to the Kobo database when updating the metadata on the Kobo.

I am rather puzzled as to why anyone would have a book on their ereader without also having a copy in Calibre. Think of it as the first stage in your backup/disaster recovery plan. Lose your ereader? The books are safely stored elsewhere. Personally, I keep my ebook collection in 4 places including two physical and one cloud backup. As the old IT saying goes: I know I'm paranoid, I just don't know if I am paranoid enough.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It is necessary to have a copy on the Kobo and in the Calibre library in order for the series information to be passed to the Kobo. After that, I do not know. But why would you delete the book from Calibre? Once you read it and delete it from the Kobo, you'd then have one copy if it was still in the Calibre library.

Just curious, if there is an entry in Calibre for the book, but no actual book file in Calibre, will calibre still update the metadata on the Kobo device?

davidfor · 08-01-2017, 07:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John F

Just curious, if there is an entry in Calibre for the book, but no actual book file in Calibre, will calibre still update the metadata on the Kobo device?

Yes, it can. The metadata updates are done from the calibre database, not the actual books. And this is the way you can track library books.

MicheleBS · 08-01-2017, 01:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DNSB

I am rather puzzled as to why anyone would have a book on their ereader without also having a copy in Calibre. Lose your ereader? The books are safely stored elsewhere.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It is necessary to have a copy on the Kobo and in the Calibre library in order for the series information to be passed to the Kobo. But why would you delete the book from Calibre? Once you read it and delete it from the Kobo, you'd then have one copy if it was still in the Calibre library.

You're right, that doubts are appropriate: I wasn't clear.

So, why not a copy also within Calibre Library?

For what concerns actual e-books, regularly bought in the e-stores, I do have a copy in my Calibre library, first of all, and I manage them just with the software: full metadata support, optimal customization, sending them to Kobo with the proper command.

But, in addition to reading actual e-books (novels, narratives, essays), the other main usage of Kobo for me (even more important, maybe) is to grab articles from the Web, converting them to .epub (with nice tools like DotEPUB or Grab My Books) and upload them to Kobo, then, with the aim to read them comfortably, in the following days, without hateful distractions. I refer mainly to in-depth articles of culture, arts, geopolitics, but also brief columns from on-line newspapers, posts from my favourite blogs, as well as little finds from the web.

In these case, it wouldn0t be so important to store a copy of the article also in Calibre: often I read these articles only once or twice, then I just trash them, or after some days, tops (directly through the Kobo "Remove" function).

Maybe you can judge it industrious, but such a habit (not so difficult, actually) is a wonderful method for me to operate a selection only of the most interesting articles and to pay them the proper attention when I read, due to the care I had to take to convert them, to summarily control the formatting of the paragraphs, and, indeed, to cutomize their metadata to better be aware of their origin, their authors and their URL also when in Kobo, later, extrapolated from its original source.

Anyway, if also a copy in the Calibre library is requested for a complete management of metadata, correct sending to Kobo without errors and so on, no problem: I will match the articles both in Calibre and Kobo.
Show Series / Series Index:

I followed your suggestions, and still I couldn't understand to 100% the behaviour of Calibre/Kobo with metadata. But in something, at least, I succeded: the Series has come back.

I will post my deductions, soon.

filmo · 08-01-2017, 04:04 PM

Calibre has more than 430 english language news sources available for download from around the world. I read a few of these each week then delete.

07-20-2017, 06:41 AM	#1
MicheleBS Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Cesena (Italy) Device: Kobo Aura One	Show further metadata on "My Books" list Dear Forum, last week my new Aura One finally arrived at home. These days I'm checking its features and settings. I want to say that I am going not to buy books through Kobo Store: my aim is rather to manage my own e-books (bought elsewhere), and upload articles saved from the web and converted to ePub. I am used to edit the metadata with Calibre or EPubMetadatEditor, to customize sorting, title, cover, and to correct possible inaccuracies. Anyway, on "My Books" list, by default the Title and the Author are shown by default. But I saw that some of the books uploaded in the last days also showed informations like Series and Index, that was very useful for me. So I added the Series and Series Index entries also to other books and articles, but still they appear as before, only with Titleand Author. I examined tha metadata on the ePubs showing such those additional info, but did'nt notice anything different from the other ePubs. Unfortunately, I removed them now, so that I can't post their metadata here, to help you deducing what makes difference. In the end, do you know how to edit metadata so that Series and Index regularly appear in "My Books" list? Thank you!

07-30-2017, 07:42 PM	#6
MicheleBS Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Cesena (Italy) Device: Kobo Aura One	Still no metadata except from Title and Author... Thank you Terisa and davidfor for your replies, and sorry for such a long time in mine. I spent these days trying to better understand this matter of the metadata in the Aura One, and following your suggestions. Sadly, I haven't found a solution yet: still I can't see other metadata in "My Books" list than Title and Author. And it's strange, because these epubs do contain further metadata like Series and Series Index, that in some cases were shown, some weeks ago. In particular, I remember Il Cibo è Sacro by Dionigi Tettamanzi, Series i Corsivi n. 48, that I could view as follows, till some weeks ago: And such a view was fine and useful, for me. Then, after I made some changes, to make tests, Series and Series Index disappeared in the List also for this book. But still its metadata contains these entries, so I can't understand the reasons of the disappearing. I edited metadata both 1) through Calibre and 2) bypassing it, making use of ePubMetadataEditor instead, a very very useful utility. In both cases, no success. I have always ejected the device properly, waiting then for Kobo to udate the informations and reload the library, with the last changes. But no success. ... Also it would be very useful if Calibre was able to assign the books to the desiderd Collections: I see that there's a dedicated column, "Collections", in the Calibre list of the books stored in Kobo, but if I add a Collection to a book, like it was a sort of Tag, after the eject all seems to be unmodified. Adding the name of a Collection in the "Collection" entry of a book, doesn't reflects to the Kobo, when we eject it. And the only way to assign a book to a Collection, is through the Kobo itself, which is somewhat uncomfortable. I remind you that all these books don't belong to Kobo store: I bought them elsewhere and uploaded them manually. Any other ideas? Tips? Thank you! Last edited by MicheleBS; 07-31-2017 at 04:06 AM.

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07-20-2017, 06:59 AM	#2
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	The series information comes from Kobo for books downloaded from them. The calibre can maintain the series info when you connect the device. Unfortunately, it can't do this when sending a new book to the device. You need to let the device process the book and connect again for the series info to be updated.

07-20-2017, 02:59 PM	#3
MicheleBS Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Cesena (Italy) Device: Kobo Aura One	Thank you davidfor. I'm afraid I don't understand, though. The epubs I am referring to don't come from Kobo Store; I bought them elsewhere. When I analyse the .epubs metadata inside my Aura One (I created a folder on my own), I see that they mantain informations also about Series, Index and other entries. But in the "My Books" list I can't see these additional details in evidence; I mean, sometimes I saw them, in the past, but I can't understand the logic under that showing/hiding, to replicate it. I thought that using "Send to the device", in Calibre, erased the metadata, but I tried and verify: still the metadata own to the .epub .files. Another trying was to copy the .epubs directly to my Kobo pesonal folder, bypassing Calibre. No additional Series/Index metadata showing, neither in this case. ... This wondering came only because I saw a couple of books showing such these precious additional infos, last days, and I would like to understand how to make them to regularly appear. It would be great if I could use them to better describe the news articles and reportages I convert to .epub format from the Web: for example, in case of giornalistic reports consisting of multiple chapters, or several different posts from periodic columns. I would see the articles listed as follows: Post title Column title - Progressive number of the post Author Any suggestion?

07-20-2017, 03:37 PM	#4
Terisa de morgan Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,233 Karma: 11768331 Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Madrid, Spain Device: Kobo Clara/Aura One/Forma,XiaoMI 5, iPad, Huawei MediaPad, YotaPhone 2	Yes. After you have sent a book to the device, disconnect the Kobo, allow Kobo to process the book and connect Kobo again to calibre. When the process finishes, the series will be in the book list.

07-20-2017, 07:37 PM	#5
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	And if that doesn't work, the configuration needs to be changed. The KoboTouch or KoboTouchExtended driver needs to have the option to update series info set, and in the "Sending books to device" preference, "Metadata management" needs to be set to automatic. If that doesn't work, we need to do some debugging.

07-30-2017, 11:17 PM	#7
davidfor Grand Sorcerer Posts: 24,907 Karma: 47303748 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Sydney, Australia Device: Kobo:Touch,Glo, AuraH2O, GloHD,AuraONE, ClaraHD, Libra H2O; tolinoepos	If you are not seeing the series info on the device it means one of a few things: - The calibre configuration is not correct. - The book does not have series information in the calibre library. - The device has not been connected to calibre since the book was added to the device and processed by the device. - When the device is connected to calibre, the book is not matched to a book in the library. - Something is broken. Based on my experience here, the most likely reasons are the first and the third. The important thing is that the device does not read the series info from the metadata in the book file. The series info is not standard epub2 metadata. Hence, editing the metadata in the book with other tools won't help. The driver used by calibre to talk to the device updates the series info directly in the database on the device. Once that is done, and the driver is configured correctly, the series info will be displayed in the library lists on the device. So, check the configuration. The driver needs to have the series info option set. Right click on the device button when the device is connected and select the configure menu item. The configuration dialog will be opened. Go through the options on the various tabs and find the series info option and make sure it is checked. Then go into the calibre preferences to the "Sending books to device" page. At the top is make sure that "Metadata Management" needs to be set to automatic. The next time you connect the device, the series info will be updated for all books on the device that match with books in the calibre library. If the above doesn't work, I need to see a debug log from calibre. For collections, calibre can manage the collections on a Kobo device. The collections column in the device list is what the device has reported to calibre as to the current collections for those books. The above instructions for the series info is effectively what you need, except for different configuration options in the driver. But, there are some instructions in https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kob...nd_Collections.

07-31-2017, 04:24 AM	#8
MicheleBS Enthusiast Posts: 27 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2017 Location: Cesena (Italy) Device: Kobo Aura One	Really precious, davidfor. Thank you. I will test and then I will let you know!

08-01-2017, 04:04 PM	#15
filmo Wizard Posts: 1,326 Karma: 1077205 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: Kobo Touch, Sony T1, Kobo Mini	Calibre has more than 430 english language news sources available for download from around the world. I read a few of these each week then delete.