Aura AURA ONE, manual shelves and pdf series?

[pluma]

hallo alle,

Is there a way to make add shelves manually? My files are starting to become unmanageable due to lack of grouping.

Also I read something about 'series' in epub. I assume this is different than shelves? Is it possible to mark pdfs as series?

thanks.

[meeera]

Hi,

The best way to manage an unwieldy number of books and shelves (collections) on your Kobo is to manage both your books and collections using Calibre.

There is a sticky thread in this forum that links to the wiki article on how to do this. The thread is here

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=193184

and the wiki article here:

https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Kobo...nd_Collections

[davidfor]

@pluma: I agree with meeera about using calibre to manage collections. But, you can create them on the device. Go into the collections list, press the menu icon near the top-right of the list and select "New collection". That will take you through creating the collection and adding books to it.

You can also add books to collection from the book list. Long press on the book and the menu displayed will have a option to add the book to a collection. And from the list of books you can add the book to multiple collections.

But, adding books to collections does not remove the books from the main book list. The list contains all books. You can filter them with the "Show" filters to unread, finished, reading etc (the exact list depend on the firmware version and the books on the device). The filters also work when looking at a collection.

Series information is displayed in the book list under the title. This will be populated by Kobo when you purchase and download a book with series info. The only other way I know to get the series info onto the device is from calibre. It can set the series information when you connect the device. It does this for all book on the device that are in the calibre library and have series info. It will do this for all book formats.

[Braid]

Using Calibre to manage collections was something I have always imagined would be possible and useful, but I didn't know how to do it.

The linked threads do seem helpful, but they are full of very long and technical posts.

Would anyone care to briefly outline what are the basic functionality and processes involved in managing collections with Calibre, once the software is fully set up and ready to go? I'm just interested in finding out what makes this method so much better than using the built-in collection management on the Kobo device itself.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Braid

Using Calibre to manage collections was something I have always imagined would be possible and useful, but I didn't know how to do it.

The linked threads do seem helpful, but they are full of very long and technical posts.

Would anyone care to briefly outline what are the basic functionality and processes involved in managing collections with Calibre, once the software is fully set up and ready to go? I'm just interested in finding out what makes this method so much better than using the built-in collection management on the Kobo device itself.

Once it is set up, it is a piece of cake. All you need to do is to add the collection name you want your book to go into to the collections column you've created in the setup. When you then add the book to Calibre, it will put it in the right collection for you (including creating the collection if it's not already on the device).

Spoiler:

[Re the following - see davidfor's clarification.] (There's a very slight wrinkle to that - I think you need to eject the Kobo, then connect it again, then eject it once more for your collections to fully update for the books you just added. Hopefully someone more knowledge will confirm/deny that. I don't bother doing this as a specific step, as I figure my book will be put in the right collection when I next connect/eject in a few days, and meanwhile it's there in my recently added tile anyhow.)

This is not only quicker and easier than doing it on the device, but it also means you have all your carefully created collection information backed up, should your device break, be lost or stolen, or need to be factory reset.

Please don't balk at what looks like a lot of technical wordage - I'm not a programmer or anything, and I followed the directions just fine, taking it step by step.

[davidfor]

No, it's the series info that is done on the next connection. That's for new books sent. Collections can be created when the books are sent to the device.

@Braid: My recommendation is to install calibre and have a play. Then reread the instructions for the collections and try them. Then ask about what you don't understand.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by davidfor

No, it's the series info that is done on the next connection. That's for new books sent. Collections can be created when the books are sent to the device.

Ah, thanks!

[Braid]

Originally Posted by meeera

Once it is set up, it is a piece of cake. All you need to do is to add the collection name you want your book to go into to the collections column you've created in the setup. When you then add the book to Calibre, it will put it in the right collection for you (including creating the collection if it's not already on the device).

Oh, okay. So when you add a book to Calibre, Calibre will look at which tags it has, and create Collections based on those tags? So if the books you are adding have tags attached to them that you don't want Collections for, will you have to go through and delete those tags, or just put up with the redundant Collections?

I take it that the process of adding books to collections then, is just a matter of going through and adding "tags" to your books on the "edit metadata" menu of each book individually, or in bulk.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Braid

Oh, okay. So when you add a book to Calibre, Calibre will look at which tags it has, and create Collections based on those tags? So if the books you are adding have tags attached to them that you don't want Collections for, will you have to go through and delete those tags, or just put up with the redundant Collections?

I take it that the process of adding books to collections then, is just a matter of going through and adding "tags" to your books on the "edit metadata" menu of each book individually, or in bulk.

I believe there is a way of creating collections from the calibre Tags column, but I don't do it that way.

I have a custom column in Calibre (which I call "shelves") in which I put the collection names that I want each book to go into. Adding that custom column is in step 1 of the wiki instructions. The only collections my books will go into are the ones I tell them to.

These collections will _behave_ like tags do, in that books can be on more than one shelf; but these shelves are not created from your Calibre Tags column.

[Braid]

Oh I see. Thanks for clearing that up for me! Sounds pretty kewl, I think I'll set it up sometime soon.

[davidfor]

Just to clear it up, you can use any column, and you can use multiple columns. I have "#mybookshelves,series,#status". In that, "mybookshelves" is a tag-like column I populate as needed, "series" is the the series name so a collection is created for each series that is on the device and "#status" is the status in my library for the book (unread, read, reading, cleaning and some other things). The book is put into all the collections that come from those columns.

[pluma]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Just to clear it up, you can use any column, and you can use multiple columns. I have "#mybookshelves,series,#status". In that, "mybookshelves" is a tag-like column I populate as needed, "series" is the the series name so a collection is created for each series that is on the device and "#status" is the status in my library for the book (unread, read, reading, cleaning and some other things). The book is put into all the collections that come from those columns.

I don't understand how you're doing this. Do you mean add that syntax in a tabbed separated file? Mmm.. like this?

#mybookshelves series #status

Where do you put this file in kobo?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by pluma

I don't understand how you're doing this. Do you mean add that syntax in a tabbed separated file? Mmm.. like this?

#mybookshelves series #status

Where do you put this file in kobo?

You need to configure calibre to send the collections, not the device. And specifically, you need to configure the driver you are using. The driver is either the built-in KoboTouch driver or the KoboTouchExtended driver if you installed that. The links that meera gave have slightly out of date instructions, but are still usable.

But, you need to go to the second tab in the driver configuration dialog, and look at the section for collections. The field "Collections Colums" is what you are interested in. You need to put the names of columns that contain the collection names you want. If you use more than one column, separate the names with a comma.