Adding a large collection of PDF books

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rustrans
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2019 3:03 pm

Adding a large collection of PDF books

Post by rustrans »

What would be the best way to add a large collection of PDF books to Bookends?
These are all work related books that I keep in related folders (like Logic\ or Calculus\ ) and they are all named after the pattern "Author - Title-Publisher-Year".
Right now I see no way of even minimal automation of the process, I have to create every single entry manually and then just attach every book to its entry. So any help with at least partial automation would be greatly appreciated.
The other question is if I should consider other software for a book keeping? (I think Bookends primary goal is to organize journal articles)
Very rarely I do have to cite one book or the other but I guess in these rare instances I can insert citations manually. The primary objective is to have a single repository with all the books with convenient sorting and organizational features.
DarrenIngram
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Joined: Tue Apr 12, 2016 8:37 am

Re: Adding a large collection of PDF books

Post by DarrenIngram »

I am wondering if the "Calibre" e-book organization application may be better for you, especially since you rarely need to cite books.
Jon
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Re: Adding a large collection of PDF books

Post by Jon »

If all you need is a book catalog, have you looked at Bookpedia?

Jon
Sonny Software
rustrans
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2019 3:03 pm

Re: Adding a large collection of PDF books

Post by rustrans »

DarrenIngram wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2019 4:49 am
For whatever reason I thought that Calibre can handle only epub, mobi, etc. But it does import PDFs and can download metadata for PDFs from Amazon, Google, etc. I will definitely play with it more.
Jon wrote: Sun Oct 27, 2019 8:58 am
Bookpedia looks pretty cool but I think its primary goal is cataloguing physical books (borrowed, on-sale functionality). I could not even find how to open a pdf book in a 3rd party app and the built in viewer is pretty weak.
I guess what I could do is to create a watch folder and then put all PDFs into it and have Bookends import books this way and then use built in online search to populate metadata. This will work, the only problem is that I could not find the "Leave in place" action (which I guess defeats the purpose of a watch folder). But still, if I could somehow point Bookends to a specific folder and tell it to import everything in it into the library leaving files in place, that would solve my problem.
Also you mentioned in an email, that Bookends can't parse file names but maybe there is a script that can put say a filename into a book title?
Jon
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Re: Adding a large collection of PDF books

Post by Jon »

Why use the watch folder, which isn't intended for this sort of thing? Just drag and drop the PDFs on the library window and, in the attach dialog, uncheck the option to move/copy the PDF from where they are.

Once you have them attached to empty references, use Autocomplete Paper with the ISBN (and use Google Books as the source). It's one at a time, though.

Jon
Sonny Software
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