Aura Library Management?

[Halk]

It's been a while since I changed readers, but I'm now considering the latest Kindle and the Kobo H20. The Kobo at the moment seems best.

I've been reading and watching reviews and looking at threads but there's something that I think I should properly understand before I buy.

How well does the Kobo Aura H2O handle large libraries of books which are manually added? Does it treat them differently to books purchased on the device? In combination with Calibre can I have a large library of books on the Kobo which are easily and neatly sorted so I can navigate properly?

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Halk

It's been a while since I changed readers, but I'm now considering the latest Kindle and the Kobo H20. The Kobo at the moment seems best.

I've been reading and watching reviews and looking at threads but there's something that I think I should properly understand before I buy.

How well does the Kobo Aura H2O handle large libraries of books which are manually added? Does it treat them differently to books purchased on the device? In combination with Calibre can I have a large library of books on the Kobo which are easily and neatly sorted so I can navigate properly?

Currently, I have ~2400 ebooks on my Kobo. Large enough for my purposes.

Sideloaded books are treated differently in that reading position, etc. are not synced across multiple devices. There are some issues with Canadian privacy laws so Kobo appears to be avoiding the issue by not having information about books not purchased from them on their servers. One comparison I ran across is that in the US, the police can ask a library for your checkout history while here in Canada, the library removes the information when the book is returned.

Not sure what you mean by navigation. If you mean a file/directory structure, that is not supported unless you use an alternative reader such as koreader or CoolReader. You can use collections to sort books together or (my personal preference), add series information and use the builtin search function to locate books by title, author or series -- using a database makes the search quite fast and painless. Koreader recently added the capability of using the calibre database stored on your ereader to search for books instead of navigating a directory tree to locate them.

I'd recommend using Calibre to manage collections, series information, etc. It's a lot easier than trying to use the limited GUI on the Kobo device.

[93terp]

Originally Posted by Halk

It's been a while since I changed readers, but I'm now considering the latest Kindle and the Kobo H20. The Kobo at the moment seems best.

I've been reading and watching reviews and looking at threads but there's something that I think I should properly understand before I buy.

How well does the Kobo Aura H2O handle large libraries of books which are manually added? Does it treat them differently to books purchased on the device? In combination with Calibre can I have a large library of books on the Kobo which are easily and neatly sorted so I can navigate properly?

I have over 1,100 books on my Kobo Aura H2O, all sorted into Collections based on genres, which I only ever manually add via Calibre. I have a total of 8 Collections. From my perspective it handles my large library very well in that I've had no freezes, and it's very quick starting up when it's been powered off.

Hope this helps.

[Halk]

Well I went ahead and got an h2o. I've used Calibre for a while and my books are fairly neatly sorted into "Series". When I move them onto the h2o they don't seem to carry that across to collections. Is there something I'm overlooking?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Halk

Well I went ahead and got an h2o. I've used Calibre for a while and my books are fairly neatly sorted into "Series". When I move them onto the h2o they don't seem to carry that across to collections. Is there something I'm overlooking?

On the dropdown by the Device icon in the toolbar, select "Configure this device" and add "series" as a metadata type to create collections from.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Halk

Well I went ahead and got an h2o. I've used Calibre for a while and my books are fairly neatly sorted into "Series". When I move them onto the h2o they don't seem to carry that across to collections. Is there something I'm overlooking?

eschwartz has given the short answer. But, have a look at Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above if you need more info.

[GeoffR]

You can create a collection for every series using Calibre, but that takes some extra setup.

What I do instead is just enable the "Set series information" option in Calibre's KoboTouch driver and set the metadata management option (Preferences > sending books to devices) to automatic, so that the series name shows up in the book information on the device. (Note that you need to reconnect the device to Calibre a second time after transfering the books for the series information to show up).

Then I can just search for the series I want, select it from the pick list, and I get a list of all the books in the series. No collections needed.

(The books in the screenshots are synced kepubs, but it works exactly the same for sideloaded epubs).

[Halk]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

On the dropdown by the Device icon in the toolbar, select "Configure this device"

I've seen that set of options.

and add "series" as a metadata type to create collections from.

I'm sorry but I don't understand that instruction.

[Halk]

Originally Posted by davidfor

eschwartz has given the short answer. But, have a look at Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above if you need more info.

Is it possible that is the wrong link? It seems to point to something else?

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Halk

I've seen that set of options.



I'm sorry but I don't understand that instruction.

See screenshot.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by davidfor

eschwartz has given the short answer. But, have a look at Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above if you need more info.

Originally Posted by Halk

Is it possible that is the wrong link? It seems to point to something else?

Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above

@davidfor, you accidentally used the "post" bbcode instead of "thread".

[Halk]

Works a treat eschwartz, thank you very much

I tried your method Geoff, however without success - or perhaps it's the same method, the step I hadn't done was tick the create bookshelves. I've had it do metadata automatically so perhaps I needed all of that for it to work.

Thanks for all of you for your help here.

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Halk

Is it possible that is the wrong link? It seems to point to something else?

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Quick Guide to Shelf Management with calibre 0.9.1 & above

@davidfor, you accidentally used the "post" bbcode instead of "thread".

I've fixed it.