An app for indexing a large collection of ebooks and pdfs?

September 15, 2019 1:07 PM

Is there an app that'll go through my growing collection of ebooks and index them according to Library of Congress number? Or one that does the Dewey way? It'd be great to have an index that I can browse by subject essentially.
posted by storybored to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

I think your best bet is Calibre. It's the most extensible ebook manager I know of, and it has many plugins for metadata collection and integration with outside sources. For example, [Metadata Source Plugin] SRU - Library of Congress and [GUI Plugin] Library Codes would probably help you get started. There may be better or more recent plugins than that; the MobileRead forums are loaded with possibilities.

(Note that Calibre is ugly as heck...but it's free, you can customize it like crazy, it's available for just about any platform you can name, and it is exceptionally reliable and well-maintained. Once you get into it, you can throw thousands of books at it and it won't flinch.)
posted by bcwinters at 1:42 PM on September 15, 2019 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: bcwinters, I have Calibre and had no idea it could be extended with LoC data! Thanks!
posted by storybored at 2:16 PM on September 15, 2019

I don't know how large your library is but if it is pushing more than 50,000 books you may want to break them into sub-libraries. It has been awhile since I tested but Calibre hiccuped pretty bad for me when it tried to do my whole collection in one library.
posted by jadepearl at 2:19 PM on September 15, 2019

Response by poster: Thanks Jadepearl. I'm barely near 1000 books so it might not yet be a problem for me.
posted by storybored at 2:29 PM on September 15, 2019