Looking for a cataloging app. Anyone tried Libib?

[Drou]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

The attached screenshots show what the cover grid layout in Calibre can look look like. As for the space issue, with the cost of storage today, you could easily keep the Calibre copies on your laptop while storing the originals on a removable drive - which is good for backup anyway. imo the advantages of Calibre outweigh the small cost of the extra storage used.

This pretty much exemplifies why not calibre for me personally - I didn't even know you could get grid view!

I just checked and I still can't find that option. Your calibre menu looks different from my 'straight out of the box' menu and I can't even work out how to change that lol - I'm really not technically clueless but as I said before, I really feel like I need degree level computer knowledge to do anything besides the most basic conversions in calibre. It's a great program and I'm really glad it exists but I just don't find it easy to use and as long as I can convert ebooks, I'm really not that bothered about learning anything more - yes it took me a good few hours to set up an online based catalogue but I can guarantee it would have taken me that long at least to get to grips with all the ins and outs of calibre! And that's not including any time would have needed to edit the meta data to my liking lol!

Also, I do back up my ebooks to an external hard drive but I also find it is much easier when emailing ebooks to myself to download to other devices that having a folder with just the ebook files and just selecting the ones I want is a lot less time consuming that going in and out of individual author folders in my Caibre folder to find the ones I want to email.

It's just my own personal preference, I'll take something that I like the look of and is easy to use as it comes over having to spend a lot of time tinkering with something to get it to look and work how I like, no matter how customisable it has the potential to end up being, any day of the week.

[Uncle Robin]

fwiw, the only change I made to the cover view in Calibre was to add the background graphic. The core cover grid view is "out of the box" and not altered. It's also very accessible to non-techie types, as I am. It is more straightforward to access than Calibre functions you're already using, such as conversion.
As you say, it is all about personal preference. It does seem odd to me though that you would bother asking when you've already made up your mind. Several users have shown that Calibre does in fact do everything you want it to do, at no cost, yet you dismiss each presentation of Calibre's functionality out of hand.

That's entirely your right and your choice, but it does come across as "what you do think of X? Don't bother replying because I've already decided and am not actually interested in your answers"

[Drou]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

fwiw, the only change I made to the cover view in Calibre was to add the background graphic. The core cover grid view is "out of the box" and not altered. It's also very accessible to non-techie types, as I am. It is more straightforward to access than Calibre functions you're already using, such as conversion.
As you say, it is all about personal preference. It does seem odd to me though that you would bother asking when you've already made up your mind. Several users have shown that Calibre does in fact do everything you want it to do, at no cost, yet you dismiss each presentation of Calibre's functionality out of hand.

That's entirely your right and your choice, but it does come across as "what you do think of X? Don't bother replying because I've already decided and am not actually interested in your answers"

Oh dear, how can I put this, I really do genuinely mean this in the nicest possible way, but I never actually asked!

I just replied to Mook4Nook who was asking for suggestions, explained why I personally felt Libib was a good option for me and possibly for them based on their criteria, and explained why I'd discounted the other options that had been suggested to the person who originally started this thread. JSWolf asked me to elaborate on why I didn't want to use Calibre which I was happy to do because I always find, when looking for suggestions, knowing about someone's thought process/reasoning as to why they've made a certain choice is very useful in helping me decide if it will be a good option for me.

Others have then commented on my reasons for discounting calibre, explaining that I was labouring under a misapprehension in some regards, or that they felt it was simple to use. I'm grateful for all the information given in these comments as I've learned a bit more about calibre which is always useful but also because they provide anyone else reading this thread hoping for enlightenment with more knowledge and options. In responding to those comments, I wasn't trying to be contrary, I was just trying to explain my thinking and experiences in hopes that they might be useful to someone who is looking for some sort of cataloguing system but, like me a couple of weeks ago, might not be sure where to start.

Having found an option which provides everything I'm looking for though, I have no plans to use anything else and wasn't asking for other options - I'm indecisive enough as it is, deciding on one thing is bad enough, I'm not enough of a masochist to go back and rethink a decision already made

[halloleo]

I’ve tried Librarything, Libib, BookCrawler (iOS) and calibre.

Web solutions like Librarything, Libib have the advantage that they are available everywhere where you have internet. calbure has obviously inherently better privacy, but making the library available outside your LAN is pretty hard.

At the moment I use LibraryThing for books I’ve read and where I store my reviews while I use calibre to store eBook content.

I might move over to calibre for everything, but somehow I like to be part of this quirky out-of-the-mainstrem LibraryThing network…