[GUI Plugin] LibraryThing Match

[Bradles]

LibraryThing is a social cataloging web application for storing and sharing book catalogs and various types of book metadata. It is used by authors, individuals, libraries, and publishers.

LibraryThing Match is a calibre plug-in for comparing your calibre e-book list with your LibraryThing catalog.


Main Features:

• Filter your LibraryThing books by Collection, Tags, N most recently added.
• Sort you LibraryThing books by author, title, entry date, entry date reversed.
• Display a list of your LibraryThing books for side-by-side comparison with your calibre e-books
• Compare the two lists using a fuzzy matching algorithm to easily identify books which do/do not exist in both lists.
• Save matches in a calibre custom column.
• Save your LibraryThing ratings in a calibre custom column (half-star ratings).

Special Notes:

• Requires calibre 5.0.0 or later.
• The LibraryThing interface works with public LibraryThing catalogs only, which excludes books you have marked as "Private".

Installation Steps:

• Install the plugin from calibre preferences (Preferences - Plugins - Get new plugins).
• Alternatively, install it manually by downloading the attached zip file, and installing as described in the Introduction to plugins thread (look for "How do I install a plugin manually?").

Paypal Donations:

• If you find this plugin useful please feel free to show your appreciation.

Version History:

Spoiler:

Version 0.1.1 - 21 Feb 2021
Fix an edge case in the matching algorithm.

Version 0.1.0 - 18 Feb 2021
Initial release of LibraryThing Match plugin

[Bradles]

(reserved for future use)

[Duke9700]

I am very excited about this plugin. LT deserves far more love than it seems to get!

For those of us who use Authors names as FN LN (I know - scandalous!) the plugin will try and match calibre first names to LF last names e.g. Adam-Troy Castro is paired up with John Joseph Adams.

Are there any tricks or possible future configuration for this? I'm assuming I would just go back and forth in the Preferences>>Advanced>>Tweaks and switch between fn ln and ln, fn for Author Sort. If anyone has a better or more elegant method I'd love some ideas!

[Bradles]

Originally Posted by Duke9700

For those of us who use Authors names as FN LN (I know - scandalous!) the plugin will try and match calibre first names to LF last names e.g. Adam-Troy Castro is paired up with John Joseph Adams.

Thanks Duke.

I would not expect a very high probability match in that situation. The algorithm splits each string into "tokens" (i.e. words), sorts them, then compares the shortest combination. It includes the book title, so only if the titles are very similar as well would you get a high probability match. You can expect quite a few low probability matches, e.g. 50% and under, just from these random word matches.

The LT API also returns author first last, so it would be fairly easy to add that as a LTMatch configuration option.

Let me know if you are seeing anything different and I'll look into it further.