Personal Library management

From MobileRead

Managing your personal library of eBooks or even regular books can become a daunting task. This page is intended to provide some solutions to the problem.

Home Library

Do you have an extensive eBook Library? How about printed books? Home Library aims to provide a top-quality eBook management software solution, powerful enough to handle any situation, but simple enough that anyone can use it. But, Home Library is not only for eBooks--it works to organize printed texts as well. Perform keyword searches on your collection, keep companion content handy, and easily backup your library for safe-keeping.

Planned features include:

• Self-contained library -- All electronic media (ebooks, supplemental materials, etc.) is copied to a separate directory, to keep everything centralized and managed.
• Automatic information retrieval -- Through the use of Amazon's Web Services, book information can be automatically retrieved, just by entering the book's ISBN.
• Find similar books -- Find books that may be similar to ones already in your library.
• Support for any document format -- The actual format of an ebook doesn't matter to Home Library. It can deal with whatever by simply opening it in the system's associated application.
• Library backup/restore -- A user's entire library can be backed up into a compressed archive, and later restored (either to the same system, or a new computer).
• eBook export -- ebook files may be exported to a new file, named according to the book's title/authors/publisher/publication date, with user-customizable formatting.
• Batch eBook import -- Add multiple files, or entire folders, in one go.
• Attach supplementary materials -- supplementary materials (such as zip files, CD ISO images, etc.) may be attached to book entries.
• Full-text search capabilities -- electronic media is indexed, and the actual contents of files are used in searches.
• Auto ISBN retrieval -- file names (and perhaps even file contents) are scanned for potential ISBN's.
• Categorized browsing -- books can be categorized, like folders on a computer. A single book may appear in multiple categories.
• Library index -- a file can be created containing all books in a particular category, organized by book (listed in alphabetic order), or by author (each author listed alphabetically, with their books under them).

Combination Solutions

Reading and conversion software can also provide for personal library management. Tools that fall into this category include:

• Calibre - extensive management and conversion for Sony LRF files and others.
• GEB Librarian - provides management and conversion for RB and IMP files.