Management of Large Series?

[TechSarge]

There is a rather large series of books that I'd like to start reading. However, I don't want to clutter up my current Calibre library (pushing 2000 large books). Most of the new series books are text files, requiring conversion to read properly on my Kindle. They are also written by several different authors. As Calibre tends to title/author a new file that's html, txt, or zip by the first line of text in the file, I'd have to (currently) add each book, one at a time, and fix things before moving to the next book, so it doesn't get lost in the library. This is beyond tedious for 300+ books!

Is there a simple way to do this so the new imports don't get lost, before I can fix the metadata and convert them? Should I create a whole new library and just work on them in there? How do I do that? Is there a better way?

[theducks]

Originally Posted by TechSarge

There is a rather large series of books that I'd like to start reading. However, I don't want to clutter up my current Calibre library (pushing 2000 large books). Most of the new series books are text files, requiring conversion to read properly on my Kindle. They are also written by several different authors. As Calibre tends to title/author a new file that's html, txt, or zip by the first line of text in the file, I'd have to (currently) add each book, one at a time, and fix things before moving to the next book, so it doesn't get lost in the library. This is beyond tedious for 300+ books!

Is there a simple way to do this so the new imports don't get lost, before I can fix the metadata and convert them? Should I create a whole new library and just work on them in there? How do I do that? Is there a better way?

They don't get lost
You are not letting Calibre deliver the goods. Instead, you ar headding under the skirts.
BTW 2K books is not clutter , just archive the originals and use Calibre filed copy
NB Some Users have over 10K books in Calibre. Learn to use tags, set Series name (and Index).
Send to Device or Send to disk (useful for devices that are Not recognizable by calibre) can include the series index in a way tham keeps it in order.
In your case you do NOT want Author to be the top sort. Series is what is important.
sample:

{series[0]}-series/{series}/{series_index:0>2s}-{title}_{id}/{title}_{authors}

The series folder is useful to 1)make findin a single series easy. 2) prevent overfilling the root layer of some file systems

[speakingtohe]

When I add a bunch if books I use the GUI date column to sort them. (click on date at the top row)

A custom column (I use Y/N) to indicate which books have been processed is very handy as is a list type column to keep track of errors that you still need to fix.

Assuming that none of the books you are adding are in mobi, you can also click twice on the mobi format in the tag browser to see which books have not been converted yet.

Helen

[BetterRed]

When I add a bunch of books I put them into a separate, normally empty, library called Workbench.

I can add whatever columns etc I need to help me "knock them into shape", as I a complete a book I tag it with _done

Periodically I move the books that are _done to the main library.

In the main library I tidy up any loose ends to make the _done books conform to my Main library conventions

Then I remove the _done tag in the Main Library.

When the Workbench is empty I know I have _done everything

BR