As we've mentioned several times on this blog, Calibre is an extremely useful and versatile program that allows us to easily manage one or more electronic libraries . We've already seen the importance of metadata, tags, and filters; now let's see how plugins allow us to customize the program according to our needs and preferences.
To see the plugins we can add to Calibre, we go to Preferences > Advanced > Plugins > Get new plugins . There we can choose from a wide variety of plugins, and we also have the option to add many more using the Upload plugin from archive option (even those created by us) or we can choose to customize the ones already installed.
We can use plugins that manage files, metadata, appearance, conversion, catalogs, and we could go on for quite some time. Since there are so many, I'm going to introduce you to my favorites , which I (personally) find very useful and help me a lot in managing my libraries.
A number of add-ons we can install are related to the Metadata Source , which allows us to add new catalogs from which to download book metadata, not only from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Google, but also from Biblioteca, Fantastic Fiction, FictionDB, Goodreads, ISBNDB, and others. This greatly simplifies the process of inserting metadata into your library's books, but it doesn't completely eliminate the need to review the metadata to ensure it's accurate.
To get a bit more specific, one of the plugins I use most often is Find Duplicates , created by Grant Drake . This plugin lets us check for duplicate books in our libraries , either within the same library or by comparing several. It's configurable and allows us to compare by title and/or author. In both cases, we can try to locate identical or similar items, and we can also search for duplicates by identifier or by comparing file sizes.
Once it has done its work, it provides us with a list of books, and we must decide which ones are actually duplicates and which ones are not. This way, we can prevent files that are not actually duplicates from being automatically deleted, even if they have a matching title.
As I mentioned before, if we have several libraries, this feature allows us to compare them , reducing the space they occupy on our computer and keeping them better organized. I seem to be a little obsessed with order, don't I? That's why I'm back at it again with metadata: it scans our library for differences in the existing metadata and, if it detects any, allows us to correct the errors (for example, if we have an author sorted by First Name Last Name and we've accidentally included Last Name First Name).
Another interesting plugin is Manage Series , also by Grant Drake . As its name suggests, it allows you to manage series in bulk by renaming the collection, modifying the order of the books within it, and so on. It's very useful if you have many books to organize into collections.
Another Great Drake plugin I have installed is Extract ISBN , which scans a file's contents and extracts the ISBN code. It's very useful for completing the file's metadata.
I'm starting to get worried that almost all my favorite plugins are from Great Drake, although the Open with plugin from kiwidude is also very useful , as it lets us choose which external application to use to open the files we're managing. Calibre will open them by default with its built-in book viewer, but sometimes we'll need to open them with other programs to be able to modify the file.
Apart from these add-ons that I've mentioned, we must also consider the existing add-ons for removing DRM, although as we always say, do so at your own risk and bearing in mind that it contravenes the terms of use of the stores and publishers that implement them, as is the case with Amazon.
But, like other times, I recommend that you look among the many accessories available and choose the ones that most convince you (you know, trial and error method), I have limited myself to suggesting the ones that help me the most.
More information – Our digital library managed with Calibre (II)