Author level metadata

[Sidetrack]

I love Calibre and I may be an atypical user, in that most of you can probably go straight to their favorite website for full bios and bibliographies and be purchasing and downloading books in just a few clicks. While I spend a fair amount of time disconnected from the internet bobbing around in the middle of some ocean (lets me read a lot of books though).

One thing that is difficult for me to get a handle on is author info beyond a listed name or author related tags applied to a book. It would be very nice though if Calibre could accommodate Author level metadata from which I search or could look at a generated author page and bibliography.

Along the lines of the ebook database that Calibre already contains a second linked datase of Author info like:

Name
Psuedonyms (with parent/child relationships in the calibre database)
Related Authors
Sex
Nationality
Born/Died
Bio Text
Picture
Web links
Genre(s)
Awards
Bibliography of written works (list of titles owned titles in bold and clickable link to the local copy, unowned clickable to get/find a copy)

With some effort I can get a lot of this out of Calibre as is: tags, user categories and saved author web pages stored along with the ebooks. Seems like it would be much handier to have it all integrated. I'd envision being able to search for 19th century female British authors, pull up a Brontë, click to her sister and launch a project Gutenberg search to get a book I don't have.

Similarly it would be nice if my Calibre ebook library knew that Stephen King is a 20th century best selling American horror writer that wrote four books under the psuedonym Richard Bachman and that I don't have three of his best selling books and am missing two of Bachman's.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Sidetrack

I love Calibre and I may be an atypical user, in that most of you can probably go straight to their favorite website for full bios and bibliographies and be purchasing and downloading books in just a few clicks. While I spend a fair amount of time disconnected from the internet bobbing around in the middle of some ocean (lets me read a lot of books though).

One thing that is difficult for me to get a handle on is author info beyond a listed name or author related tags applied to a book. It would be very nice though if Calibre could accommodate Author level metadata from which I search or could look at a generated author page and bibliography.

Along the lines of the ebook database that Calibre already contains a second linked datase of Author info like:

Name
Psuedonyms (with parent/child relationships in the calibre database)
Related Authors
Sex
Nationality
Born/Died
Bio Text
Picture
Web links
Genre(s)
Awards
Bibliography of written works (list of titles owned titles in bold and clickable link to the local copy, unowned clickable to get/find a copy)

With some effort I can get a lot of this out of Calibre as is: tags, user categories and saved author web pages stored along with the ebooks. Seems like it would be much handier to have it all integrated. I'd envision being able to search for 19th century female British authors, pull up a Brontë, click to her sister and launch a project Gutenberg search to get a book I don't have.

Similarly it would be nice if my Calibre ebook library knew that Stephen King is a 20th century best selling American horror writer that wrote four books under the psuedonym Richard Bachman and that I don't have three of his best selling books and am missing two of Bachman's.

Calibre does not any of provide this. (I agree, at least have a Pseudonym, connected to 'Similar: Same Author') Currently Custom columns is only at the 'Book' level.

Get books, search the internet PI will go to configured sites.

[chaley]

There is a long discussion of authors databases in the thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...highlight=link

To summarize that thread: you can do something close to what you want by creating a document in some format for each author of interest. You associate a link to that document with the author (see Manage Authors). Clicking on the author in book details will open your document.

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by theducks

(I agree, at least have a Pseudonym, connected to 'Similar: Same Author') Currently Custom columns is only at the 'Book' level.

A way of handling Pseudonyms would be great.

I handle them one of two ways.

1) Just change the author name to the "real" (best known) name.

2) Put the Pseudonym as the Author Name, but have the Author Sort based on the "real" name.

I use a separate column to create collections by Author on my Sony. I use the "real" author's name there.

[Sidetrack]

Originally Posted by chaley

There is a long discussion of authors databases in the thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...highlight=link

To summarize that thread: you can do something close to what you want by creating a document in some format for each author of interest. You associate a link to that document with the author (see Manage Authors). Clicking on the author in book details will open your document.

a similar idea percolated up into my frontal lobe overnight. I believe I'll mess around with that. Thanks for the link to the other thread