Multiple Libraries Possible?

[KeithO]

Hi all, I just downloaded Calibre last night in anticipation of getting my Sony 600 any day now. It's a great program...I especially love the recipes for getting feeds of newspapers etc.

I do have one quick questions though...is it possible to have multiple but separate libraries? My wife and I both read avidly, but very different kinds of books, and I wanted to keep them in different libraries to make for ease of use.

TIA
Keith

[weedfreak]

You can change the path to library setting in Preferences so you could create 2 libraries, one for each of you. By changing the preferences setting you could switch between the two.

Alternatively you could use tags, add a tag Keith to all your books and a tag wife(?) to all hers then all books are available without switching libraries. Any books in common could have both tags.

[KeithO]

Originally Posted by weedfreak

You can change the path to library setting in Preferences so you could create 2 libraries, one for each of you. By changing the preferences setting you could switch between the two.

Alternatively you could use tags, add a tag Keith to all your books and a tag wife(?) to all hers then all books are available without switching libraries. Any books in common could have both tags.

The tags sounds like an interesting approach...I'll look into that. Thanks!

[Sabardeyn]

I could be wrong, but I think changing the path moves any books previously entered into calibre to the new path. So if you had ../users/Keith as the original path and changed it to ../users/Wife, all of the books are copied to the Wife folder.

[itimpi]

I think the copy only happens if there is not already a Calibre library at the new location.

[Houndx]

This would be an excellent feature addition imho. Of course I arrived here by googling "calibre multiple libraries" and for exactly the same reasons as the OP. The answer I was hoping to find was that I could add a seperate library icon to the Library/Devices bar at the top so that I'd have access to all our content in the same place but also be able to maintain them on seperate lists.

[kovidgoyal]

It's on the TODO list, be patient.

[Houndx]

That's great news, thanks a ton for all your hard work!

[workshy_1]

That's great news and would add to what is already a fantastic piece of software - the ability to handle separate libraries easily would be fantastic truly making this the itunes of ebooks!!!

[KeithO]

Brilliant! Thanks Kovid!

[kovidgoyal]

Hold you horses, doing this requires an extensive re-write of the database backend to make it plugin based and so on, so it will be quite a while before it hapens.

[highwaykind]

Are multiple libraries possible yet?

Ideally I'd like to create subfolders (and sub-sub folders..) for main 'categories' within Calibre so I can browse through only a specific section of my book collection (1300 and counting) *

Since that's not an option I figured I'd bypass that little issue by creating 2 different libraries (I hate that my 'regular reading Fiction books' are mixed in with the "medical/computer/science/language etc Non Fiction text educational books).

I'm using the "download social media" option, so tags are not very useful for real sorting/organizing (some of my own tags are in the downloaded tags as well, and I gave up on manually changing them).

*) or if anyone else has a solution for creating and browsing through only part of say Fiction - and within Fiction certain subcategories (Biograhpies / Thriller-mystery-Detective /SciFi / Childrens/ Classics etc)

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by highwaykind

Are multiple libraries possible yet?

There are two ways to do this, and both are discussed in this thread. You can set up multiple independent libraries and switch within seconds by the wizard under Preferences. Alternatively (and better) you can use the tags.

Ideally I'd like to create subfolders (and sub-sub folders..) for main 'categories' within Calibre so I can browse through only a specific section of my book collection (1300 and counting) *

Use the tags, it's much more flexible than folders.

(I hate that my 'regular reading Fiction books' are mixed in with the "medical/computer/science/language etc Non Fiction text educational books).

Just tag them medical/computer/science/language etc.

I'm using the "download social media" option, so tags are not very useful for real sorting/organizing (some of my own tags are in the downloaded tags as well, and I gave up on manually changing them).

I use this, too. Just add your own tags on top. It's easy to do in bulk. A few seconds will add the medical tag to all your medical books - and it's much faster than separate libraries. If you want to see only your medical books, just type "medical" into the search bar, and everything else disappears. When you add a few dozen medical books, just highlight them all, hit "e" and type "medical" in the tag area. It's done. You don't even need to type all of "medical." Typing "med" will pull up that tag from the list, then hit enter.

if anyone else has a solution for creating and browsing through only part of say Fiction - and within Fiction certain subcategories (Biograhpies / Thriller-mystery-Detective /SciFi / Childrens/ Classics etc)

Type "biographies" on the search line, and that's what you see. Heck, just type "biog" and you get what you want. If you want all scifi that's also detective. type "scifi detec" and you get Asimov's robot murder detective stories. Even "sci detec" or "sci murd" (for murder) will probably get it.

I have 3000+ tags from the download social media option, but it's easy to add the few that I normally use with the bulk edit option. Really - you just have to get comfortable with tags and you won't want separate libraries.

[highwaykind]

Thanks for the walkthrough!!

Type "biographies" on the search line, and that's what you see. Heck, just type "biog" and you get what you want. If you want all scifi that's also detective. type "scifi detec" and you get Asimov's robot murder detective stories. Even "sci detec" or "sci murd" (for murder) will probably get it.

Ah! I didn't know I could search on 2 tags at once!!

Originally Posted by Starson17

If you want to see only your medical books, just type "medical" into the search bar, and everything else disappears.

That's kind of my problem with the way it is now- when I type "medical" everything that happens to have medical in the title will also show up. (with "medical" maybe not so much of a problem, but this tagging thing is not as "perfect" as only searching through seperate folders. (When I type "fiction" "non-fiction" will also show up).

So I think I'll go for 2 seperate libraries (and switch through Preferences)
And then within the Libraries I will use tagging to find what I need. And then I'll wait until switching between libraries becomes a "hit the button" thing in some future update maybe

[itimpi]

Do not forget that you can use logical operators such as 'and' 'or' 'not' in the search field ('and' is assumed if no operator is specified). I am not sure if there is an "exact match" syntax so that you can stop 'fiction' also matching 'non-fiction'? With your example you could say

tag:fiction and not tag:non-fiction

Note I used tag: as the prefix to stop the search looking in any other fields. This technique can also be used for other fields such as author: or format: . As the most recent searches are available in the drop-down box it is quick to get back to any recently used ones without having to retype them.