Storing the publish date for books

[daneshere]

I have read other posts about being able to edit the date column, and I believe the published date of the book is even more important than the publisher. I guess I could get a mysqlite editor and change the timestamp manually, but is'nt that information available from isbndb? Even just an extra column with a short int for the year would be enough.

Good work on the software as a whole though, I wouldn't change anything else if I made it my self I'm sure you have a good reason for your thinking, I was just wondering what it is.

Cheers!

[kovidgoyal]

You can always add the first published date to the comments. The reason it isn't a column is because there isn't much need to sort on it, in normal usage patterns

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

You can always add the first published date to the comments. The reason it isn't a column is because there isn't much need to sort on it, in normal usage patterns

I always sort books by an author according to copyright date. I thought that was very common to do and to read them in copyright order.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by tompe

I always sort books by an author according to copyright date. I thought that was very common to do and to read them in copyright order.

That's what the series field is for, to order books in a series.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

That's what the series field is for, to order books in a series.

But what about authors that do not write series? I read new authors in copyright order even if they do not write series (I assume that "misc" could be a serie so you can solve it that way). It is also interesting to know when a book was written when you read it especially for contemporary books.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by tompe

But what about authors that do not write series? I read new authors in copyright order even if they do not write series (I assume that "misc" could be a serie so you can solve it that way). It is also interesting to know when a book was written when you read it especially for contemporary books.

Create a fake series named "books by author so and so" and add the first published date to the comments.

[da_jane]

I also use the copyright date for books (alot of romance readers do because of reprints and reissues w/in the genre). I'm using the tag field to sort the date, but it would be nice to have a copyright date. It's one of the fields of information that almost all publishers give.

[daneshere]

It sounds to me that other people would find this a useful addition to the software, can i get a show of thumbs from others that think its a good idea?

[yekim54]

Originally Posted by daneshere

It sounds to me that other people would find this a useful addition to the software, can i get a show of thumbs from others that think its a good idea?

Sorry ...

[jowen1]

Lack of the date of publication in the metadata is but part of a wider problem. The metadata in Calibre does not comply with any standard for bibliographical information such as Dublin Core. This makes Calibre entirely useless for professional cataloguing, e.g. in libraries. In fact, Calibre is great for creating RSS-documents and for format conversion. But as a cataloguing application it is, unfortunately, rather amateurish.

But I do give thumbs-up for adding a field for the publication date. That would be a small step forward at least.

[rhadin]

[mores]

HA!
So I am not the only freak around here

I thought of another reason why the publishing date might be of interest: Authors sometimes re-publish their books to make them more contemporary, remove references to "dead" technologies (such as car phones or LPs) etc.

But using the "Series" field (which is awesome, by the way, but strange since most programs/databases/etc. do not give this info) is a plausible "plan B" for my needs.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by jowen1

Lack of the date of publication in the metadata is but part of a wider problem. The metadata in Calibre does not comply with any standard for bibliographical information such as Dublin Core. This makes Calibre entirely useless for professional cataloguing, e.g. in libraries. In fact, Calibre is great for creating RSS-documents and for format conversion. But as a cataloguing application it is, unfortunately, rather amateurish.

The needs of a library versus a private collection are very different. calibre is meant to make creating private collections as painless and easy to use as possible. As for dublin core, in the coming digital information revolution, you will find that existing systems of classification and indexing (derived as they are from the needs of a time when "books" were produced in miniscule numbers, by a limited and reasonably well defined set of entities) to be wholly inadequate.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The needs of a library versus a private collection are very different.

In what way are they different?

I just looked at Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and I would like to have all 15 elements in my book data base. I also might need additional elements.

A lot of my friends use the library classification system for their books. I assume they also use other meta information inspired from libraries.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by tompe

In what way are they different?

I just looked at Dublin Core Metadata Element Set and I would like to have all 15 elements in my book data base. I also might need additional elements.

A lot of my friends use the library classification system for their books. I assume they also use other meta information inspired from libraries.

Users of private collections are typically more interested in reading than in cataloging They need a tool that allows them to get a certain minimum amount of metadata reasonabl correct, with as little effort as possible. Librarians on the other hand, never actually read all their books, they spend their time making sure all the metadata associated with each book is correct.

And let me say this one last time in bold:

calibre allows you store arbitrary metadata for each book. It just doesn't allow you to sort on the arbitrary metadata. You can still search on it, refer to it, admire it, show it to all your friends.