Publication Date or Copyright Date or ???

[hd_cal_dave]

Brand new calibre user here with a question about publication dates. When downloading metadata for a book (say from Gutenberg), I am getting various publishers and publication dates.

However, those dates may not be for the version I have. Furthermore, for other older classics (like Beowulf) I am getting the date that the edition of the book I have came from, when what I think I want is the date it was originally written.

What are people generally doing in this regards? Leaving publisher/publication date alone and added your own metadata? Or is there a better way to handle this? Or am I just being ridiculous by wanting to track this information?

[jackie_w]

Welcome to Mobileread. Many of us are a bit obsessive about various ebook-related stuff, so you're amongst friends

I don't know what other people do, but as far as the calibre 'pubdate' column is concerned, for novels, personally I only care about what year the novel was originally written.

I don't care what year/month the ebook version was actually published unless it's a technical manual which sometimes change between editions.

At the end of the day, it's your library and you're allowed to do whatever you like.

[hd_cal_dave]

Thanks for the response. I agree with you I could not care about the date the ebook came out.

In the case of books with multiple editions, I do think it makes sense to capture the date of the edition I have.

Currently, this date -- the original publishing date -- does not appear in any Calibre downloaded metadata (that I can tell). Is this right?

I've been resorting to google research to find out which is taking me a minute or so per book....not good.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by hd_cal_dave

Thanks for the response. I agree with you I could not care about the date the ebook came out.

In the case of books with multiple editions, I do think it makes sense to capture the date of the edition I have.

Currently, this date -- the original publishing date -- does not appear in any Calibre downloaded metadata (that I can tell). Is this right?

I've been resorting to google research to find out which is taking me a minute or so per book....not good.

Check the configuration settings for Download Metadata.
1) If you have limited sources, the one you have chosen may not supply that bit.
2) No source is configured for Pubdate.
3)Yor books are so off the wall that no one admits to publishing them

[jackie_w]

I don't usually rely on downloaded metadata for Published date. I tend to use the FantasticFiction website and have set Prefs - Look&Feel - Default author link template to

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/search/?searchfor=author&keywords={author}

so that when I click on the author name in the Book Details panel it takes me to the relevant webpage. Also useful for getting book series info. But I manually enter the data into calibre.

[unboggling]

I usually enter pubdate manually by referring to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/index.cgi which I like better than FantasticFiction. But I couldn't figure out how to set author-search into url for ISFDB for the author template.

[hd_cal_dave]

Given that my collection is all over the place genre-wise (physics, art, classics, software, fiction, mystery, science fiction, etc.), it sounds like I'll have to keep searching amazon and wikipedia, etc. Man this is a pain....

[unboggling]

After a metadata download on selected books, you've got ISBN, click that in Book Details panel and you link to WorldCat, which often shows a brief subject entry or will give you a list of books by that author, including pubdate for each listed edition. You can also click "View all editions and formats" which list also gives dates.

For popular authors of most genres, Wikipedia is often okay. Wikipedia is the default author-link-template when calibre is first installed (Prefs/Look&Feel/BookDetails tab), which links to Wikipedia by clicking author's name in Book Details panel.

Sometimes author-sites are good.

There are probably good specific sites for each genre, though I don't know most of them except SF & Fantasy. Googling may help. Links from Wikipedia entries on specific genres may help.

[hd_cal_dave]

Originally Posted by unboggling

After a metadata download on selected books, you've got ISBN, click that in Book Details panel and you link to WorldCat, which often shows a brief subject entry or will give you a list of books by that author, including pubdate for each listed edition. You can also click "View all editions and formats" which list also gives dates.

Didn't know about the world-cat thing...also didn't know you could click on those as links. Thanks a ton.