Glo Organize books from SD card

[Bookripper]

I spent weeks on making a perfect tree-structure for about 2500 books. it was selected by layers of category, writers, series, etc... very nice and very easy to scoop through 2500 books, to get the one you want. Now I inserted my SD card with this format into the Kobo Glo, and it became just one long list, sortable by title, or author. no structure, nothing. total crap, to be honest.

is there a trick, or do I really have to sort everything out again in those shelves, and is it possible to have a tree structure in the shelves?

like this

shelve 1 = Horrorbooks
shelve 1, layer 1= ---------- map with Stephen king
shelve 1, layer 2 = -------------------------Stephen king - blood series
shelve 1, layer 1=----------- map with Clive Barker

Just the normal, easy-view stuff....

what's the use of having a possible 30.000 books on this device if you cant sort em out properly in categories and undercategories. At least allow to sort by Genre.
might be I missed something but so far I really dont like the kobo desktop app. so simple. if I wanted Simple, i would have bought an apple Device.

some tips would be very appreciated!

thanks, Ripper

[murg]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

is there a trick, or do I really have to sort everything out again in those shelves, and is it possible to have a tree structure in the shelves?

No trick, the shelves are non-structured. Linear. Just a list. one dimensional.

[Bookripper]

dear god

[murg]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

dear god

Yes, my son?

[murg]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

shelve 1 = Horrorbooks
shelve 1, layer 1= ---------- map with Stephen king
shelve 1, layer 2 = -------------------------Stephen king - blood series
shelve 1, layer 1=----------- map with Clive Barker

Ok. You can have shelves like:

Horrorbooks - Stephen King - Map
Horrorbooks - Stephen King
Horrorbooks - Clive Barker - Map
Horrorbooks - Clive Barker
Horrorbooks - Nancy Reagan - Map
Horrorbooks - Nancy Reagan
SciFi - David Weber - HonorHarrington
SciFi - David Weber - Dahak
SciFi - Asimov, Isaac - Foundation
SciFi - Asimiov, Isaac - Robot
SciFi - Asimov, Issac - Other

Originally Posted by Bookripper

what's the use of having a possible 30.000 books on this device if you cant sort em out properly in categories and undercategories.

Well, two things here. Why do you need to keep 2500 books on your reader?
Secondly, I agree with you.

[Bookripper]

Oh Great Father, I need some better tips, something celestial perhaps? or I would have to make about 300-400 goddamn shelves!!!
I just spent weeks like a monk in solitude already, to get to the point where I am now. Why does Thy sprinkle my path with the Thorns of tribulation? :-)

to answer your Q: because I travel a lot and want all my stuff with me. (I actually have OVER 30.000 books, so this 2500 is a pretty tight selection. And also: because Kobo said I could!
I am used to reading books on a tablet. with astro or any other file-organizing app, u can create the perfect structures.
I only buy drag & play devices. I make a map on my pc, i want the same map on my external device, using the name I gave to the file. not some id-tag Crap...

why do I feel I have weeks and weeks of painfully slow sorting crap ahead???

[murg]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

Oh Great Father, I need some better tips, something celestial perhaps? or I would have to make about 300-400 goddamn shelves!!!
I just spent weeks like a monk in solitude already, to get to the point where I am now. Why does Thy sprinkle my path with the Thorns of tribulation? :-)

to answer your Q: because I travel a lot and want all my stuff with me. (I actually have OVER 30.000 books, so this 2500 is a pretty tight selection. And also: because Kobo said I could!
I am used to reading books on a tablet. with astro or any other file-organizing app, u can create the perfect structures.
I only buy drag & play devices. I make a map on my pc, i want the same map on my external device, using the name I gave to the file. not some id-tag Crap...

why do I feel I have weeks and weeks of painfully slow sorting crap ahead???

You're going to end up creating the same number of shelves. Getting through them on the list page will take a bit longer, but you will get a feel for where they are, so you can jump to page 120 of 200 to get to a shelf.

Warning: The following is dangerous and should only be done if you know what you are doing!

Another alternative is to manually manipulate the database. Add a few shelves and add some books to those shelves so that you have a model. Make a backup of your kobo's files, get an editor for the Sqlite database and manually put together the shelves and shelf table. I think that there are two tables involved in putting books on shelves (in addition to the Content table), and it will go a lot quicker than doing it through the user interface.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

Oh Great Father, I need some better tips, something celestial perhaps? or I would have to make about 300-400 goddamn shelves!!!
I just spent weeks like a monk in solitude already, to get to the point where I am now. Why does Thy sprinkle my path with the Thorns of tribulation? :-)

to answer your Q: because I travel a lot and want all my stuff with me. (I actually have OVER 30.000 books, so this 2500 is a pretty tight selection. And also: because Kobo said I could!
I am used to reading books on a tablet. with astro or any other file-organizing app, u can create the perfect structures.
I only buy drag & play devices. I make a map on my pc, i want the same map on my external device, using the name I gave to the file. not some id-tag Crap...

If that is what you want, you bought the wrong device. The current Kobo ereaders all do it the same way: a library list, single level shelves and search on the title and author. This is a design decision by Kobo on how they think the devices should work. And Kobo said you could have the books on the device, I don't think they said they would support every individuals method of organisation. As far as I can tell, none of the "name" ereaders will do it the way you want to.

As an aside, when I have tried your method of storing books and music, it never worked for me. Because the genre is the root, there is the problem of authors that write in more than one genre. Their books get separated into different areas. My sense of order wants all the books from an author in the same place. I much prefer to be able to tag them and us a search to find all similar books.

why do I feel I have weeks and weeks of painfully slow sorting crap ahead???

If all those books have their metadata set correctly, I think I could do it in a day or two with calibre. Doing it the way murg suggested wouldn't be that hard either.

[Bookripper]

Originally Posted by murg

You're going to end up creating the same number of shelves. Getting through them on the list page will take a bit longer, but you will get a feel for where they are, so you can jump to page 120 of 200 to get to a shelf.

Warning: The following is dangerous and should only be done if you know what you are doing!

Another alternative is to manually manipulate the database. Add a few shelves and add some books to those shelves so that you have a model. Make a backup of your kobo's files, get an editor for the Sqlite database and manually put together the shelves and shelf table. I think that there are two tables involved in putting books on shelves (in addition to the Content table), and it will go a lot quicker than doing it through the user interface.

I have no experience with databases, but how hard can it be? I softmodded my Xbox, and my tablet is rooted, overclocked and running a ROM from another brand. :-)

so I download something like SQLite Database browser and start from there?

[murg]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

I have no experience with databases, but how hard can it be? I softmodded my Xbox, and my tablet is rooted, overclocked and running a ROM from another brand. :-)

so I download something like SQLite Database browser and start from there?

I'm using Sqlite Studio. That's not a recommendation, it just happens to be the first one I downloaded, and does the job. I do find it annoying sometimes, but then I'm an experienced database person.

First, do what I suggested: add a few books, create a few shelves, add books to shelves (in all cases more than 2).

Second, copy the Sqlite database from the Kobo to your hard drive. Make another copy as backup.

Next open up the database, on your hard drive with the Sqlite program. Look at all the tables. Look at your books in the Content (or Contents) table. Look that the other tables. See how the data in the various tables are cross linked.

Manually create the entries to add an existing book to a shelf that it is not currently part of. And commit the change.

Do this with another book.

That covers the mechanics.

At this point, you can either copy you changed database over the database file on the Kobo, or you can open the database on the Kobo and do the data change again.

If you are going to copy the database back to the Kobo, it is very important that WiFi is turned OFF, and that the Kobo remains plugged into the USB port during the entire time from when you take the copy of the database from the Kobo to when you copy the changed database back to the Kobo disk. This prevents the Kobo from changing the database and then you wiping out the changes when you copy the database back.

And of course, let me repeat the caveat: Manually changing the database is dangerous and may lead to a factory reset.

[Bookripper]

Thanks a lot Murg! I really appreciate your input.
I'll give it a go tonight, but I find it so frustrating that obvious stuff like this is not possible with the Kobo desktop application...
It should be possible to create the shelves on the kobo app, drag books into the correct shelve, THEN copy them on the device. whats so hard about this, are these developers THAT nearsighted?

[thp1017]

You might also take a quick look at some of the various scripts people have written to do this automatically. Haven't tried them myself, so no idea if they work, but here are two I found:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=186102
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=192581

Easiest is to probably back up your current database, run the script, see what happens

[ebsebs]

Originally Posted by davidfor

As far as I can tell, none of the "name" ereaders will do it the way you want to.

I don't think this is correct. I have a Nook ST and I have my library organized like Bookripper: Genre -> Author -> Book.
When I purchased the Nook, I simply copied the root folder from my PC to a micro SD card,
maintaining the same hierarchical folder structure. I put the SD card into my Nook,
browsed to "My Files" -> "Memory Card", and there were all my books, exactly as I organized them on my PC.
You don't see book covers in this view, which might bother some, but I actually prefer it.

Organizing your library in the fashion might not be for everyone, but for those of us that like it this way,
it's good to have a reader where a simple drag-and-drop is all that's required.

[murg]

Originally Posted by Bookripper

Thanks a lot Murg! I really appreciate your input.
I'll give it a go tonight, but I find it so frustrating that obvious stuff like this is not possible with the Kobo desktop application...
It should be possible to create the shelves on the kobo app, drag books into the correct shelve, THEN copy them on the device. whats so hard about this, are these developers THAT nearsighted?

The Desktop app doesn't know about your sideloaded books, so it really can't organise them. Interestingly, the shelves are synced to the Desktop, but the contents of the shelves are not, except for the Wishlist.

I just had a quick look at the database, and you're going to have to create the shelves on the device as it generates a GUID as the shelf's internal identifier. Or you can find a GUID generator and format the GUID in the correct format.

[PeterT]

Actually I think the GUID might get created on the first sync.