shelf-like display of the covers of the book in a collection

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foice

If I may add. I am not a big fan of the "desktop folder" that many OS have in their GUI. But I have to admit that for a limited amounts of files I have seen people organizing their material on the desktop folder quite efficiently. You put what you need where you remember it is and where it needs to be when you need it.

And how do you handle a book with 27 authors (my wife has purchased quite a few anthologies that had that many and more authors)? I spent way too much time over a decade back trying to make a directory structure that would give me what I needed to be able to locate books with those complex requirements. Then I found calibre and have never looked back.

Originally Posted by foice

Of course if you put too much stuff on it then it stops working. I believe that, especially for things for which we (old enough) have a taste for their physical experience, having "desktop folder"-like solution to sort and organize makes sense, more than having _only_ algorithmic sorting.

I used to have rows of bookshelves in the basement. Having my books in calibre with the ability to search and sort is lightyears ahead of bookshelves in giving me the ability to locate a book rapidly.

Originally Posted by foice

For context ... I often to the bookstore, see books, read a bit and then decide if I want to buy on paper (seldom) or get the ebook. Here most places sell both versions at this point.

Whereas in my area of Canada, there are still a few bookstores though most of the bookstores that were around 15 years back are no longer in existence but none of the existing bookstores that I visit offer physical and ebook sales. Possibly since, as an example, even if I go to Chapters/Indigo's website, the ebook sales bounce me over to Kobo.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And how do you handle a book with 27 authors (my wife has purchased quite a few anthologies that had that many and more authors)?

The author folder of choice would be "Various".

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by John F

Is anybody saying that's what they want?

Yes, the OP did very explicitly say that:

"It stil does not have the look&feel of a physical library, to which some of you have alluded, and that I am missing.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by foice

Here most places sell both versions at this point.

This makes me curious about where your "here" is - In my country there are exactly ZERO physical bookstores that also offer ebook sales

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

The author folder of choice would be "Various".

And how do I locate a book with a story by one of the authors in an anthology stored in the "Various" folder? Using calibre, I simply type part of the author name in the search box's Author field. Since calibre starts returning results before I finish typing the name in most cases, I seldom need to type the entire name. In the example below, N. was all I needed to type.

For an example, try finding the story Solstice on the Slab co-written by N. A. Grotepas in the Summer Solstice Shenanigans anthology using any directory structure where you not going to spend more time creating and maintaining the directory structure than reading.

The author list, BTW, is "Martha Carr & E. G. Bateman & Jamie Davis & N. A. Grotepas & Fatima Fayez & Kendrai Meeks & C. B. Miller & Mason Sabre & Marie Andreas & Mel Todd & Noah K. Sturdevant & D. M. Fike & Rebecca Bosevski & Cari Z & K. A. Last & L. A. McGinnis & Fiona Grey & Doug Parker & R. C. Barnes & Chris Patt & Tim Rangnow & Sudha Kuruganti & Avril Sabine & Marianne Morea"

[Sirtel]

A folder system would be useless to me. Often I remember neither the author nor the title, only the genre and vaguely something of the synopsis. In calibre I can still find the book either by sorting various custom columns or by searching for keywords in the comments; I'd never find it in any folder-based system.

And yes, I had the same problem with paper books, although I had vastly fewer of those than I have ebooks. Sometimes I had to search my shelves for an hour or more. Not an experience I'm eager to recreate.

Originally Posted by foice

I believe that, especially for things for which we (old enough) have a taste for their physical experience, having "desktop folder"-like solution to sort and organize makes sense, more than having _only_ algorithmic sorting.

How old is "old enough"? I saw my first computer when I was 25; internet came a few years later. I have no taste for physical experience in my digital life. None whatsoever.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by foice

It stil does not have the look&feel of a physical library, to which some of you have alluded, and that I am missing.

Also, it would be nice if the books could be sorted by hand, as you would do in a physical library, not by "tags" or other machine-friendly fields. Any idea about that?

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Yes, the OP did very explicitly say that:

I'm reminded of one friend's daughter who at one time has sorted the 100 or so pbooks she owns by height and thickness of the book, by the colour of the cover, by the number of characters in the title and author name, the weight of the book and several other odd concepts of sorting. It made for some fun times trying to locate a book and left me with visions of Melvil Dewey spinning like a top.

Perhaps the OP could add a custom column with a random number generator filling the column for each book and sorting on that column?

Anyhow, this thread is beginning to reek of the same level of inanity of the "real page numbers" threads.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by DNSB

And how do I locate a book with a story by one of the authors in an anthology stored in the "Various" folder?

Other than by using a spreadsheet, I don't know.

[Kindleing]

Originally Posted by foice

That was my first idea. But then what do you do when you want to add a book between book 34 and book 35? Are you proposing to call it 34.5?

How many books are you talking about? You don't have to number them consecutively; keave gaps in between each book. For example, do your initial numbering in increments of 10. Then, for example, you could add number 345 in between 340 and 350.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by foice

That was my first idea. But then what do you do when you want to add a book between book 34 and book 35? Are you proposing to call it 34.5?

Absolutely. That's the nice thing about floating real numbers - there's always another in-between.

Although as others have mentioned, I don't really see what order you could want manually that can't be done with some of the other meta-data.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'm reminded of one friend's daughter who at one time has sorted the 100 or so pbooks she owns by height and thickness of the book, by the colour of the cover, by the number of characters in the title and author name, the weight of the book and several other odd concepts of sorting.

With a hundred books, it's easy to sort by any obscure criteria and still find what you're looking for. Try it with a thousand or more. (I had over a thousand paper books when I switched over to digital. I sorted my paper books by author names, but as I said, I often couldn't remember the author, the title or anything else specific about a book I wanted to find.)

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Although as others have mentioned, I don't really see what order you could want manually that can't be done with some of the other meta-data.

Especially as you can create custom columns, virtual libraries and saved searches basically in any way you want. You can also sort by several criteria at once, which is difficult to do with paper books.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I sorted my paper books by author names, but as I said, I often couldn't remember the author, the title or anything else specific about a book I wanted to find.

How did you even know you wanted to find that book, then? I'm not sure how you can want a specific book without having a specific identifying criterion in mind. "I really want to read this book that I remember nothing about!"

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

How did you even know you wanted to find that book, then? I'm not sure how you can want a specific book without having a specific identifying criterion in mind. "I really want to read this book that I remember nothing about!"

I remembered something of the topic/synopsis. Like, "I know I bought/read a book about such and such years ago, but I don't remember anything more detailed. Where could it be?"

Yeah, my memory is nothing to be proud of.

[John F]

Originally Posted by foice

...

It stil does not have the look&feel of a physical library, to which some of you have alluded, and that I am missing.

...

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I started to edit my ebooks when I already had more than a thousand.

Ebooks have many advantages, but they'll never mimic paper books in all or even most aspects (fortunately, IMO), so it's pretty useless to complain about them not being like physical books. Of course they aren't. They're vastly more flexible. If all you want is that they look, feel and behave like physical objects, then obviously you'd better use actual physical books, as you'll never get what you're missing otherwise.

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Yes, the OP did very explicitly say that:

I was assuming that the OP wanted some other features/advantages of ebooks, not only to have them arranged like physical books in a library.

To me, the bolded part is a throw away statement. If somebody has "all they want" all ready, then why switch.

[John F]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Absolutely. That's the nice thing about floating real numbers - there's always another in-between.

Although as others have mentioned, I don't really see what order you could want manually that can't be done with some of the other meta-data.

I agree, that calibre does what I want for sort order, but I don't really care about sorting ebooks, usually by author is good enough. And be able to quickly sort other ways with calibre is very helpful.

For one of my other media library, I do want to be able to sort "manually". So I can picture that someone may want to sort their ebooks in a particular order.