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Mediawest / Calibre
Jun. 8th, 2011 10:00 amMediawest this year was strange -- it was quite quiet, not many people there, but I still had a good time. And I still managed to miss stuff -- like always at Mediawest.
However, I did get to the "Tips and Tricks" for e-readers panel, given by one of the girls who gave the "What e-reader should I choose?" panel last year, which I absolutely loved -- because it was so helpful. That resulted in me getting the Sony Daily Reader E-Reader, which I really like. However, my one gripe about my Sony is that the management software (which you put on your computer) is awful. I end-up buying new books ONLY thru' the store interface on the actual reader, and putting fanfic on the reader by using My Computer and copying and pasting the files (like any other files).
Well, this year at the "Tips and Tricks" panel, I learned about Calibre, which is an e-book management system. I downloaded it the weekend after Mediawest, and I absolutely love it! It handles a lot of the issues and problems I had with Sony's software. All my fanfic, which I had converted to .pdf and marked with keywords? It converted the keywords to tags! And when I downloaded the books to my e-reader, it automatically interpreted the tags as "collections". Finally, I can look at my e-reader, go to "collections" and just click on the collection title (such as "Stargate: Atlantis" or "Sherlock") and presto - a list of everything I put on the reader appears!
You can also edit ALL Metadata in Calibre, so the fanfic .pdfs that irritated me because whoever put them on the net put their own name or the editor's name in as "author" instead of the actual author's name for the story? I can fix it! I can also add/delete/and change tags. (and believe me, you want them consistent!)
One issue - and I'm going to have to pull stuff off my reader and re-download it to fix, Calbre's tag system also picks up the Library of Congress style tags for actual books (one's you buy, and ones that are free, like from Project Gutenburg), which, often-times are too specific. If you want to edit them for clarity, brevity, and consistency -- do so BEFORE putting the book on your reader. I updated the tags after moving books around, resulting in some odd categories on my reader itself.
But all in all I love it! And the program is free! You can't beat free. If you have an e-reader, I highly recommend it.
--Olivia
However, I did get to the "Tips and Tricks" for e-readers panel, given by one of the girls who gave the "What e-reader should I choose?" panel last year, which I absolutely loved -- because it was so helpful. That resulted in me getting the Sony Daily Reader E-Reader, which I really like. However, my one gripe about my Sony is that the management software (which you put on your computer) is awful. I end-up buying new books ONLY thru' the store interface on the actual reader, and putting fanfic on the reader by using My Computer and copying and pasting the files (like any other files).
Well, this year at the "Tips and Tricks" panel, I learned about Calibre, which is an e-book management system. I downloaded it the weekend after Mediawest, and I absolutely love it! It handles a lot of the issues and problems I had with Sony's software. All my fanfic, which I had converted to .pdf and marked with keywords? It converted the keywords to tags! And when I downloaded the books to my e-reader, it automatically interpreted the tags as "collections". Finally, I can look at my e-reader, go to "collections" and just click on the collection title (such as "Stargate: Atlantis" or "Sherlock") and presto - a list of everything I put on the reader appears!
You can also edit ALL Metadata in Calibre, so the fanfic .pdfs that irritated me because whoever put them on the net put their own name or the editor's name in as "author" instead of the actual author's name for the story? I can fix it! I can also add/delete/and change tags. (and believe me, you want them consistent!)
One issue - and I'm going to have to pull stuff off my reader and re-download it to fix, Calbre's tag system also picks up the Library of Congress style tags for actual books (one's you buy, and ones that are free, like from Project Gutenburg), which, often-times are too specific. If you want to edit them for clarity, brevity, and consistency -- do so BEFORE putting the book on your reader. I updated the tags after moving books around, resulting in some odd categories on my reader itself.
But all in all I love it! And the program is free! You can't beat free. If you have an e-reader, I highly recommend it.
--Olivia
