Guide to Collections Management with calibre (Touch / Glo / Mini /Aura)

[ShellShock]

Even better, I kept a backup of the database.

Before deleting the 6 shelves using the Glo's UI, the table had:

CreationDate	Id	InternalName	LastModified	Name	Type	_IsDeleted	_IsVisible	_IsSynced
2012-11-09T20:35:21Z	Asimov's 2012	Asimov's 2012	2012-11-29T09:51:31Z	Asimov's 2012		true	true	false
2012-11-09T20:35:24Z	Hervey	Hervey	2012-11-29T09:51:36Z	Hervey		true	true	false
2012-11-09T20:35:27Z	Oscar Wilde	Oscar Wilde	2012-11-29T09:51:42Z	Oscar Wilde		true	true	false
2012-11-10T10:32:47Z	c028e3df-7dc6-4611-863e-cf951ada3be2	Hervey	2012-11-29T09:51:36Z	Hervey	Custom	true	true	true
2012-11-10T10:32:47Z	7cae2e8e-7f28-47ff-95ed-420dcecc91a2	Oscar Wilde	2012-11-29T09:51:42Z	Oscar Wilde	Custom	true	true	true
2012-11-10T10:32:47Z	04f55bb0-ad90-4cda-97e7-8db8ca458f92	Asimov's 2012	2012-11-29T09:51:31Z	Asimov's 2012	Custom	true	true	true

I only had to actually delete 3 shelves, because the duplicates disappeared by themselves when I deleted the first shelf in that pair.

As far as I can recall, after I deleted all the shelves via the Glo's UI, I was still left with the 3 records where Type = 'Custom', but no shelves showed in the Glo's UI.

[Corkobo]

Originally Posted by daveman

Hi there,

I am a newby with all this so please excuse my ignorance.

I have been putting together a fairly extensive library of books. I would like to use Calibre to automatically create bookshelves by AUTHOR rather than by Series (I like to have books organized by author, using bookshelves, almost like directories)
...
I have no idea how to do this and would like some help.
Thanks
Dave

Please read these 2 threads (as well as the first page of the Thread we're in):
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=192863
and
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=118563

There is enough info in these Threads to enable you to do what you want with some experimentation.


Oh, and Welcome to the Forum!

[Gilgamesh]

Thanks for this thread, it's been very helpful.

I have one question. Is it possible to have one book on more than one shelf? If so, any hints on how to go about doing this.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Gilgamesh

I have one question. Is it possible to have one book on more than one shelf? If so, any hints on how to go about doing this.

It's in the first post. There are two ways to do it:

- Use a column for the shelves that is a tag type column. Then you can put multiple values in the column for each book.

- Use more than one column.

The example in the first post does both. It uses a custom column called "myshelves" and the series column.

[Gilgamesh]

Thanks for the reply.

I actually looked at the first post which is how I learned how to make the shelves and add books to it. I was doing it all manually once I added a book into my Kobo Touch and it was a bit of a pain.

But once I put a book in a shelf, if I try to put it in another shelf then it seems to remove the book from the first self and then puts it in the second shelf.

For example, I have a number of books with two seperate tags - mythology and folklore.

Now,when I use calibre, I bring up all the books with the mythology tag. I then do a bulk edit of the metadata by going into the custom metadata and under myshelves I type mythology. I can then look at each book and it shows that it is in the mythology bookshelf.

I then do the same thing for the tag folklore creating a new bookshelf for folklore. The problem is that any books that I had previously put in the mythology bookshelf is not removed from that bookshelf and put in the new folklore bookshelf.

When I look at the individual book, it only shows one bookshelf-folklore, even though it had previously been in the mythology one.

I was hoping to have one book on both the mythology and folklore book shelves if possible.

I looked at the first post again trying to figure out how to do it but I didn't see how to do it.

I'll have another look and see if I can figure it out.

Thanks for your help.

I just wrote all of this and then I had another look at your answer and I think the answer just hit me. If I understand correctly, I need to set up more than one column for bookshelves so that I can add two bookshelves? I think I understand this and will give it a try.

Again, Thanks for the help

[speakingtohe]

When you change the tag from mythology to folklore it should take it out of the mythology shelf and put it in the folklore shelf.

To have it in two shelves both tags must be present seperated by a comma. mythology, folklore.

Helen

[davidfor]

Gilgamesh,

As Helen said, you need to separate the tags by commas. If that doesn't produce multiple shelves for one book, it means the column is probably a plain text column and not a tag type column.

I would suggest doing this for one book rather than them all. Find a book you want on both shelves, open the edit metadata dialog, go to the "Custom metadata" tab and find you column. Start typing the shelf name. If this is a tag-type column, the values already entered will be displayed to pick from. To add a second shelf, enter a comma and the shelf names to pick from will be displayed again. If the shelf name you want isn't, just type a new name in.

When finished, save the changes, connect the device and let the sync happen. Then disconnect and check that it worked.

[Gilgamesh]

Thanks for all the help.

The problem was I had the wrong column type. I used "text, column shown in the tag browser" instead of "comma separated text, like tags, shown in the tag browser"

I actually didn't even notice this and calibre is automatically set at the first one. I checked the first post again by Peter T (thanks for the informative post) but didn't see any instructions about making sure to have the correct column type.

If Peter reads this, it might be helpful to newbies like myself to add this bit.

Thanks again for all your help. I'm off to create shelves.

[PeterT]

Originally Posted by Gilgamesh

T
I actually didn't even notice this and calibre is automatically set at the first one. I checked the first post again by Peter T (thanks for the informative post) but didn't see any instructions about making sure to have the correct column type.

Will do Thanks for the idea

[Liesse]

Thanks for all the great info in this thread - and the driver that makes it all happen. I have my Calibre set up just as in the example, and shelves are happily being made and maintained just as they should be.

Of course, I have a picky question. Sorry.

On my old Kindle, I had some collections set up for things I had a few books of. For instance, I had a "Non Fiction" collection, and a "Young Adult Collection" where I would shove the few related books of those genres I had. So The Hunger Games books got shoved in the YA collection. This helped me limit the number of collections I had for areas I didn't have too many books and wanted to organise by theme.
With my new Kobo and its automatic shelf creation, the Hunger Games books would get their own shelf made. I'd prefer they didn't, so I could shove them in a YA shelf (using the custom column?).

Is there any way to stop a shelf being made for a series (or certain books) automatically so I can instead specify which shelf I want it to go into?

[davidfor]

The driver works by assigning each book to shelves based on the values in the shelf columns. The setup I normally use is similar to the example Peter uses. That is two columns, one is a custom column and the other is the series column. The values in the custom column are manually maintained. I use "Science Fiction", "Shortlist' and a few others. Plus I normally have some testing shelves. This is where I would put "Young Adult" or "Non Fiction".

If you use the series column, it means that a shelf will be created for each series. This is nice, but if there is only one book for the series on the device, it seems like overkill. With the addition of the series information in the new firmware, I'm not sure if I will keep using the series column for shelves.

Don't forget that a book can be on multiple shelves. So, having the book can be on "The Hunger Games" shelf and the "Young Adult" shelf.

If the idea is to have either shelves from the custom column or the series, but not both, it might be possible with a custom column based on others. I am not an expert on the template language, so I don't know how to do this. Asking the question in the calibre forum would get an answer. This could also be used to exclude specific series names from having shelves created.

[Terisa de morgan]

I've done that: to create a custom column according to two or three other columns, but you have to be a bit fluent with template languages or python.

[Liesse]

Thanks for the replies. Sounds complicated and scary to set up. If the Kobo doesn't suffer from slowdowns if too many shelves are present, I think I'll be ok.

[kevenv]

Originally Posted by Liesse

Thanks for the replies. Sounds complicated and scary to set up. If the Kobo doesn't suffer from slowdowns if too many shelves are present, I think I'll be ok.

I'm by no stretch of the imagination, an expert, but my solution is this:
All of my books are loaded / managed through Calibre. I assign a book shelf to the book when I import it from from my computer into Calibre. Any books that I don't want to have a shelf, I assign to the "Misc" shelf. It is possible to assign more than one shelf to the book in Calibre as well.

Hope this helps.

[Liesse]

Originally Posted by kevenv

Any books that I don't want to have a shelf, I assign to the "Misc" shelf. It is possible to assign more than one shelf to the book in Calibre as well.

Hmm, thanks. So what I should probably do is manually specify shelves, rather than letting Calibre make them automatically based on series. It doesn't seem like too much more work than setting up my Calibre metadata.

Does this sound right? I delete the 'series' part from the Kobo driver shelves bit in preferences, leaving just 'myshelves.' Then all I need to do is set the 'myshelves' column in Calibre to whatever shelf I want that books to go into and let Calibre work its magic.