n00b questions about sorting

[Peppercorn]

Hello everyone,

First I want to apologize because this has probably been answered before, but after searching here, other websites, and in tutorial videos I am still confused.

I just downloaded Calibre (PC version) for the first time today and successfully imported my collection of over 700 ebooks (in various formats) from a folder I had downloaded from my tablet. I was hoping that choosing the "Add Books From Directories, Including Sub Directories (Multiple Books Per Directory, Assumes Every Ebooks File Is A Different Book)" option during set up would mean that the books would stay in different categories, but I now realize this is not how Calibre works.

It seems there are two ways to organize in Calibre, one is with some kind of branching hierarchy and another is by creating "libraries." I am a bit confused by both options, so my question is, what's the best way to organize the books? I have a lot of cookbooks, artbooks, history books, novels, etc, all with different sub categories within (I had them organized in different folders like this in Moon+ Reader Pro on my tablet). Or is there a way to have a folder to click on for different groups and sub-groups?

Once again, I apologize for the very n00b questions, but I am not very tech savvy and completely new to Calibre.

Thank you for any and all help

[theducks]

There is only 1 way to organize. The Library structure is FIXED.
You were looking a the Multiple ways of IMPORTING
Once imported, you can off-load (archive) the sources. They no longer need to be present.

[ekbell]

I think that the OP was asking about organizing books within a calibre library.

Calibre organization is based on book metadata (that's the information given in the columns for each book). You can add or edit the metadata by clicking on the field you want to edit or by selecting the book and choosing Edit Metadata. To edit the metadata for multiple books at once you select them and click on edit metadata Once the books are properly tagged you can then search for what you want by using the tag browser or search bar.

A simple way to organize your books would be to tag them as category.subcategory since the tags column allows for subsets or hierarchies by using a period (for example I tag a book as 'history.modern.19th century' and when I click on tags I can choose to see all my history books or just the modern history books or just the 19th century ones). You can also allow for multiple tags by separating them by a comma (so my 19 century history book may also be tagged as art or cooking and yes I do have a 19th century history book with recipes as well as a rather academic art-book on Impressionism in its historical setting) which is the main advantage of tags over folders.

Virtual libraries are a bit more involved but they also depend on metadata. Their main benefit IMO is that you can set up virtual library tabs and searches within a virtual library will only include books from that virtual library (so if I have a virtual library set up for my history books a search in that library for science books will only yield old classic science books and history of science books not current science books).

[Peppercorn]

Originally Posted by ekbell

I think that the OP was asking about organizing books within a calibre library.

Thank you so much, ekbell! That really clears things up. So just to double check, it sounds like adding tags is the easiest way to organize, but later on if I wanted I could still create "libraries" for each larger subject (such as history or art) and then use the tags (already added to the books within each library) to such further. So it sounds like the "library" funtion is similar to "folders" and simply using "tags" is just for overall searching through all books on Calibre/specific libraries. Which makes sense!


I was getting confused with the whole hierarchy thing explained here for sorting books:

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/sub_groups.html

[theducks]

Virtual Libraries are a filtered subset of a single library.
just about any search term , can be used to define the VL.

When we say Library, this usually refers to a complete separate structure (metadata.db is the structure core.)