How to put a series in read order under collections

[Alan242]

I have been entering/sideloading my Dad's old sci-fi pulp/paperback books into my Kobo Glo (4.19). With the present author (Poul Anderson,) he has 3 series (Flandry, Psychodynamic, Technic). I figured out how to create a Collection for the current books (Psychodynamic) on the Glo directly. I did not see an option to have this Collection sort by order they should be read in to achieve plot/history chronology. Is this possible directly on the Glo without using Calibre?
I did a search on the Kobo reader forum for "Collection" and spent 1/2-1 hour going through recent results (limited to this year since I do not know when the software changed to Collections tab) and found nothing but information about Calibre.
I am basically entering books alphabetically by title, which means the Collections order could change each time a book is sideloaded. I do not mind manually changing numbers each time directly on the Glo. I want to be able to change this information directly on the device when I travel as I would not have access to my computer. I am absentminded and usually forget to update information on the computer or even write myself a note to do so.

Alan

[ps67]

Series and collections are two different things. The collection is an arbitrary set of books that you put together. For example: science fiction, fantasy, history, poetry and so on. You can create as many as you want, with the criteria you want and you can also manage them directly on the Kobo, without using calibre. And a book can belong to more than one collection. But with the collections you won't have the sort in series, there is no way.

As for the series instead the thing is different: they are indeed sets of books that are part of the same story and should be read in the right order. If you buy the books from Kobo they should already be inserted in the appropriate series, if you insert them yourself you can insert the series (and the correct number inside the series) with calibre that manages the Kobo metadata really well but you have excluded the use of a computer. In short, as far as I know there is no way to do it directly on the Kobo, or the series is already present because you bought the book from Kobo or you have to use a computer (there is also Seriesmeta that works for Epub and Kepub but, again, without a computer...). Calibre can put the series in the database of Kobo for each kind of file it can read: Epub, Kepub, pdf.

Sorting by series on Kobo, if you entered the information correctly, will give you the books in alphabetical order: by title of the book those who do not make part of a series and by title of the series (with the correct order) those which belong to a series.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by ps67

But with the collections you won't have the sort in series, there is no way.

Collections can be sorted by series. In a collection or author list, you have the same sorting and filtering options as in the main library list. Creating a collection for each series is a fairly common thing to do.

@Alan242: Other than that, @ps67 is pretty much right. There is no way to edit metadata on the device to set something like this. And the only thing close to a "reading order" would be to use a series. But, the series info has to come from Kobo, calibre or the seriesmeta script. The latter two need to be done when connected to a PC. They also rely on the metadata in the calibre library or book. Which again, really mean that you are editing them on a PC.

The only other way to do it is to use the "Date added" sort. This uses the date a book was first put on the device to sort. Sorting a collection like that would work. But, you actually have to add the books one at a time for this to work. My Kobo Utilities plugin in calibre does have a way to manipulate the "Date added". This was added before the series sort option was added. It changes the date added in the database on the so that sorting by this will put the books in the order desired. It probably won't do what you want at the moment, though it can use the published date for the order. I can modify this is someone has a good idea.

But, it does break the basic thing that you want to do it on the device. With that condition, there is no way to do it.

[Alan242]

Thank you ps67 & davidfor,
That answers my question and explains why in my time on the forum I did not remember mention of a way to do this directly on the reader. Now I have learned that what I am interested in is Series, I had always vaguely thought that collections and series were the same. Now I will have to start learning Calibre to set Series information for the books affected.