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In firmware version 2.0.0, Kobo added shelves. Books could be added to one or more shelves and the shelves viewed in the same way as the main library list. In a later firmware, Kobo renamed 'Shelves' to 'Collections'.

Shelf management was added to the KoboTouch driver in calibre 0.9.1. This allows calibre to automatically manage the collections on the device when it is connected or when books are sent to the device. For this to happen, the driver needs to be configured for the collections management to be done. This includes setting which columns will be used for the collections.

The configuration is the same for both the built-in KoboTouch driver and the optional KoboTouch Extended driver. But, the configuration values are not shared between the drivers. If you change from one to the other, you need to configure the new driver.

Kobo Ereader Review

Please note: These are just the steps and choices are examples. You do not have to do exactly is written here. Where the custom calibre column #myshelves is used, you can also use any other calibre column such as tags. Do remember that a custom column is referenced as #column_name while a built-in column is just column_name.

[edit] Driver / calibre Configuration

• Add a custom column to calibre
  • Preferences | Interface | Add your own columns
  • Select Add a user-defined column
  • Select Tags in Quick create

I used Lookup Name myshelves and Column heading My Shelves

You will probably want to use the type, Comma separated text, like tags, shown in the tag browser, but, any column type can be used for collections.

Calibre To Kobo

• Open the driver configuration by either:

• Preferences | Advanced | Plugins
• Expand Device Interface plugins section and look for KoboTouch or Kobo Touch Extended driver
• With KoboTouch or Kobo Touch Extended highlighted, select Customize plugin

or:

• With your Kobo device connected, right-click the device button in the toolbar and select Configure this device. This will open the configuration for the driver you are using.

• Set the collection management options.
  • Select the Collections, covers & uploads tab.
  • Select the Collection check box. This will enable the collection management option.
  • In the Collection columns field, enter the names of the columns you wish to use for collection. For example, #myshelves, series.

This will ensure that calibre adds books to the shelves listed in the myshelves calibre column and to a shelf based on the book's series name. You could use the default tags instead, but imported books frequently have tags not useful for shelves

• • Select the Create collections to create new collections on the device. If this is not selected, books will be moved in and out of existing collections.
  • To removed empty collections, select the option Delete empty collections.
  • The field Ignore collections is used to specify a list of collection names on the device that are not to be changed by the driver. Use this if you have a collection that you manually manage on the device. The value for the field is a comma separated list of name.

Now, when you edit the metadata for a book, look for the Custom Metadata area (where it is found depends on the view you are using). In the field My Shelves type in whatever collections you want the books to be placed.

With this configuration, a shelf will be created automatically for each book series, and the books added to that shelf. And for each value in My Shelves.

NOTE: 'Wishlist' and 'shortlist' are special internal shelf names. You cannot sync tags with these names to the Kobo.

[edit] Configuring calibre's Metadata Management options

calibre has three options as to when it updates Metadata on the device. This also affects when the shelves are managed on the Kobo.

This option is managed as follows:

• Preferences | Import/Export | Sending books to devices
• The Metadata management selection has three options
  • Manual management: calibre updates the metadata and adds collections only when a book is sent. With this option, calibre will never remove a collection.
  • Only on send: calibre updates metadata and adds/removes collections for a book only when it is sent to the device.
  • Automatic management: calibre automatically keeps metadata on the device in sync with the calibre library, on every connect

As can be seen from the descriptions, for full functionality of the Kobo driver, set the Metadata management to either Only on send or Automatic management. From my experience, I have seen the easiest option to be Automatic management.

If the option is set to Manual management, shelves will NEVER be removed.

[edit] Changing Book Titles to include Series Info

Note: Kobo added an option to sort by series in firmware version 4.3.8842. With this or later firmware, adding the series information to the title to aid in sorting is probably not needed.

One probably also wants to change book titles to include Series info. That gets done via what is called a metadata plugboard. Through these you are able to modify items like the book's title or author as it gets transferred to your device.

• Goto Preferences | Import/Export | Metaboard plugboards

It looks complex, but is not.

On the line that reads Add new plugboard do the following

• In the box Format (choose first) select epub
• in the Device (choose second) box select KOBOTOUCH
• In the Source Template the magic happens. Here you have a lot of options
  • To modify the book's title to <Series> - <Number> - <Title> (i.e. Harry Potter - 01 - Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone) type

    {series}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}

  • To modify the book's title to <Number> - <Title> (i.e. 01 - Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone) type

    {series_index:0>2s|| - }{title}

  • To modify the book's title to <First Letter of Each word in Series> - <Number> - <Title> (i.e. HP - 01 - Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone) type

    {series:re(([^s])[^s]+(s|$),1)}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}

• Finally in Destination Field select title

Once all that is done, take a DEEP breath and hit the Save Plugboard button and then the Apply checkmark at the top of the screen.

You will find a lot more discussion of these over in the calibre Library Management forum with more examples in this thread.

For those people who don't care about syncing of shelves between their device and the cloud (and in turn with other devices), the ability exists to override shelf syncing.

While we are on the topic of shelves and syncing, there is a way to prevent shelves from syncing. Add the following line into your Kobo eReader.conf file in the [ApplicationPreferences] section:

SyncShelves=false

To enable shelf syncing again, either remove the line or change the value to true.I'm not sure which firmware level this was added, but it is present in 2.8.1 at least.

[edit] Cleaning Up Duplicate Shelves

Occasionally, due to issues with the Kobo infrastructure, a sync with Kobo will have the unfortunate side-effect of restoring ALL previously deleted shelves (including the possibility of myriads of duplicated shelf names).

Calibre To Kobo Convert

These are a PAIN (if not impossible) to remove from the device itself, but luckily CAN be handled via calibre. Remember, this ONLY affects the shelves on the device; the definitions within calibre stay intact, and shelves WILL be correctly re-added and populated by calibre when the device is next attached.

1. calibre has available for it a plugin called Kobo Utilities.

   With this plugin installed, and your Kobo attached, launch the plugin. (This will be dependent on where YOU selected to have the icon for the plugin added when you installed it).

   • From the plugins menu, select Database and then Fix Duplicate Shelves. The plugin will then display a list of shelves and how many occurences of each shelf are found. Select which shelves to delete, and then indicate whether to keep the oldest or newest shelf of each duplicated one. (I *think* that normally, you would want to keep the newest instance).
   • Next, decide whether or not to Purge the shelves from the database. If you decide to Purge, then the records are totally dropped from the Kobo; however, they will remain on the Kobo Server, and, unless the second bullet is done, will reappear. If you decide NOT to Purge, then the next sync of your device to Kobo will also remove the duplicate records from their infrastructure.
   • Finally, press the OK button and watch the magic happen.
2. The option also exists to ensure that neither shelves nor their contents (only Kobo format books) EVER sync to the Kobo servers.
   • To do this, with your Kobo attached to your computer, browse through the directories on it and find the .koboKobo directory. (Note that under Linux and OS/X environments, the .kobo directory will be hidden due to the leading period). Within this directory will be a couple of files; the one you are concerned with is the Kobo eReader.conf file. This file contains various options that are used to control the device.
   • Open this file in a text editor (on Windows for instance, use Notepad++, NOT Word or Write), and look for a line [ApplicationPreferences]. After this line, add a new line SyncShelves=false. Save the file, and disconnect the Kobo as usual.</p>

     The addition of this line will ensure that shelves do NOT get synced to the Kobo Cloud.

Since the bookcase in our living room is is reaching its maximum capacity, we're moving from traditional books to e-books.

My wife already has the Sony PRS-T2 e-reader, and this week, I bought the Kobo Glo for myself. The reason for choosing the Kobo Glo is that it has an illuminated screen (which you can turn on and off). So it enables me to read in the dark. No need for an additional light. It does drain the battery faster if you enable the integrated light. Not as fast as I thought initially, but compared to the battery life of the Sony reader, the difference is significant (weeks instead of months).

This post won't review the Kobo Glo itself. There are numerous other reviews online available. So, if you're looking for an in-depth review, please follow this link and pick one of the search results.

This post goes into the e-book management for the e-reader. Especially on how to sort and display series (e.g. the Jack Reacher books by Lee Child). Even though the post describes the (bookshelve) management for the Kobo (Glo), it's possible as valid for other e-readers. The (textual) information was gathered from several sources on the Internet (and added as a source of that information).

E-Book Management

The provided e-book application from Kobo is sufficient for basic use. It does integrates with a relatively large e-book store where you can buy books. Buying is also quite easy. You can pay with credit card, paypal, and iDeal (Dutch payment method). So far everything is peachy.

The problem with the Kobo application is that management of books is simple. If you need more advanced features, you might have a 'problem'.
Another problem is that most ebooks have something called DRM (Digital Rights Management). This limits the use of a book, and means that when my wife buys a book on her Sony e-reader, I can't read it on my Kobo (and visa versa). In the old days, when my wife bought a book, I could pick it up when she was finished. Now I have to pay for the same book (again) if I want to read it on my e-reader. That does not compute, so DRM had to go in my private e-book library.

I won't go into the process of removing DRM. Just use a legal search engine to search for the (possibly) illegal instructions on how to remove DRM from e-books (DeDRM). It all depends on where you're living on this globe of ours.

Calibre To Kobo Tv

The problems mentioned before can be solved with the open-source program called Calibre. The e-book management program is available for most operating systems (Windows Apple OS X, Linux), and is extremely powerful.

The interface isn't as slick as most commercial programs (in general), but that is one of the open-source features (also in general). But the lack of slickness is compensated by the abundance of features;

• Library Management
• E-book conversion
• Syncing to e-book reader devices
• Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form
• Comprehensive e-book viewer
• Content server for online access to your book collection

The following screenshot shows the typical Calibre interface in which you'll be doing most of your work. Most of the things are self-explanatory. But there are some things that require tweaking the program. Creating (custom) bookshelves is one of them.

There are a lot of writers that write series, and these series need to be read chronologically. If you don't follow the intended order, you might run into spoilers (on how a previous book ended), or you're missing information mentioned in an earlier book. Most of these titles don't offer any information on the sequence of the books (e.g. 'another great Jack Reacher Adventure....' . So you need to create the sequence by yourself. Doing this will create so-called bookshelves on the e-reader gathering/combining the books of that series in 1 convenient place. This way those books can be found easily on the device.

Series

The Calibre interface has a column called 'series' which holds the information regarding these series (duh). If you download the metadata for these books, chances are that these fields are populated automatically. If the information isn't available online (or if you want to change the series name yourself) you can edit it yourself (Select the book, and press the Edit Metadata button at the top of the window).

Just make sure the name and 'episode' number are correct.

When the series are properly populated, we need to adjust some settings to make sure that it displays correctly on the (Kobo Glo) e-reader. This is done after the Bookshelves part.

Bookshelves

As an added bonus you can create a bookshelf in Calibre on which you can 'place' books. These shelves make it possible to have one book on several 'shelves'. E.g. a book might be 'placed' on a 'Techno', 'Thriller' and 'SciFi' shelve. This way the book will be shown on the device on all those shelves. Only downside is that I haven't found a way of populating these field (semi) automatically.

For adding a custom bookshelve, we need to add a Column to the Calibre Interface.

Preferences -> Interface -> Add your Own Columns

I created a column called 'My Shelves'

When the column has been created, we need to tell Calibre that the new information needs to be transmitted to the device upon syncing. Now we need to tweak the Calibre settings.

Tweaking Calibre Settings

Calibre Send To Kobo Wireless

Adding the new column is done by editting the Kobo Device Plugin in Calibre. These plugins can be found at:

Preferences -> Advanced -> Plugins -> Device Interface plugins

Kobo To Kindle Calibre

Search for the KoboTouch driver (which is also valid for the Glo version of the e-reader), and select Customize plugin.

The things I changed in the following interface are:

• Added '#myshelves, series' in the bookshelves field
  
• Checked 'Create Bookshelves'
• Checked 'Delete Empty Bookshelves'
• Checked 'Set Series Information'

This enables the basic bookshelves functionality, but it still misses something.

When checking the e-reader, I noticed something funny. Some shelves I checked didn't have the series numbering in it. Only the titles. Other shelves did show the numbering of the series..... I couldn't find anything wrong with the metadata in the Calibre database, so this must be a bug in either the software or the reader itself.

Some experimenting showed that this happens randomly. Just keep adding books, and the problem seems to go away eventually on the device.

As a workaround (which always works) you can automatically add the series and numbering to the title of the book on the reader.

To enable this, another settings needs to be added to the Calibre configuration. The following setting describes how the files are written on the Kobo Glo, and this enables also the series numbering on the device.

The setting that needs to be added can be found under:

Preferences -> Import / Export -> Metadata plugboards

There we need to create a new plugboard entry with the following data:

Format: any format
Device: KOBOTOUCH
Source Template: {series}{series_index:0>2s| - | - }{title}
Destination Field: title

Save the plugboard, and we're good to go.

After these chances, the books are ready to be uploaded to the device. Note that books already on the device won't see these changes, so you need to upload them again for the changes to take effect.

The following 'screenshots' of my Kobo Glo shows the series information with the books in the general books view, the bookshelves, and the books 'on the shelves'.