Best Practices: What to do with auxiliary or companion files?

[mike.propp]

Hi, I'm new at this. I'm looking for suggestions on what to do with auxiliary files. For example:

-A textbook comes with a CD image of sample programs and/or course-related material

-A book on accounting comes with several excel sheets of formulas and tools

-A book on programming comes with several example files or graphic files to be used in completing examples

Any suggestions on what is the best way to let Calibre (or the person using Calibre!) know that there are companion, non-book files that go with the ebook, and where to find them?

Thanks so much!

[eschwartz]

You could add them as a 7zip archive, or an OS file link in the comments field pointing at the auxiliary files .

@BetterRed has a scheme that involves Evernote and the Manage Authors links.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by mike.propp

Hi, I'm new at this. I'm looking for suggestions on what to do with auxiliary files. For example:

-A textbook comes with a CD image of sample programs and/or course-related material

-A book on accounting comes with several excel sheets of formulas and tools

-A book on programming comes with several example files or graphic files to be used in completing examples

Any suggestions on what is the best way to let Calibre (or the person using Calibre!) know that there are companion, non-book files that go with the ebook, and where to find them?

Thanks so much!

Originally Posted by eschwartz

You could add them as a 7zip archive, or an OS file link in the comments field pointing at the auxiliary files .

@BetterRed has a scheme that involves Evernote and the Manage Authors links.

@mike.propp - this was a big issue for me when I started using calibre

My first solution was to bundle the extra material into a 7zip archive and add that to calibre but peeking in archives just to read a bit of code or a few paragraphs of text etc was irritating, and the natural place to unpack the 7zip was into the calibre book folder - but that pollutes the library, which is best avoided.

It also didn't address the issue of supplementary information for authors - interviews, obits etc

My second solution was to create a 'sparse secondary library' - it had the same library/author/book folder hierarchy, but only for authors and books where they were needed.

Into these folders I put files if various types - code, urls, spreadsheets, video and audio clips, movies, the book in languages other than English, even .exe's

The Author table has an Author Link field (accessed via Manage Authors) so that's where I put the links to the author folders. For Books I put the folder links into a long text custom column, not the Comments column because that's liable to be overwritten with downloaded metadata, also a custom long text column can be edited from the book list which I much prefer.

That worked better - but file managers are a cumbersome and limited mechanism for managing and accessing disparate data collections.

My third solution is the one that loosely couples Calibre and Evernote, and thanks to chaley to Calibre Companion. This is what I now use exclusively. I've documented it here Calibre and Evernote

Essentially its the same as using file links to file system folders, except it uses evernote links to evernote notes.

There's no extra software needed - ie no Evernote addons or Calibre plugins.

BR