How do you organise your library?

[terrypin]

Where do most users keep all their ebooks? Do they need to be in a folder that AS syncs? Wouldn't that take far too much space, for any reasonably large library?

In my case, on my PC I have a folder called
D:\Docs\My PC Library
and within that I have various sub-folders:

Annotations
(That is the only subfolder I didn't create myself; it appears to be populated automatically with .ebo files by MS Reader)

Most of the other names are self-explanatory:

AudioBooks
Dictionaries
eBooks
eDictionary Files
LIT-Conv2HTM
ReaderWorks
Repligo conversions
Technical
User Guides

There's also a single file directly under D:\Docs\My PC Library whose purpose and origin I don't properly understand, called LitPath.lpt. Perhaps how MS Reader locates and recreates its Library screen? (I found mine empty after a recent hard reset, and only recovered it by tediosly re-opening all my LIT files from Resco Explorer.)

I copy books from PC to my PPC as and when I want.

On my PPC, I keep ebooks in \SD Card\My Documents\SD Library.
Again there are a few sub-folders (just 3, including Annotations), with most files directly under the main folder. There's a complete mixture there at present: LIT, MBP, PRC, TR, TXT - even a few stray JPGs from book covers!

I'd be very interested in any comments or criticisms on this, and to learn of others' library structures please.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK

[dMores]

i have one directory called "ebooks" and all books are in there.

and since i make sure to give the files proper names
lastname, firstname - number of book if a series - title.extension

for the last year, i've been reading on a p900 with mobipocket, whereas my girlfriend uses a pocketpc with ms reader.
and most of the books i have are originally in pdf, txt or doc files, so i convert them to lit and prc. that makes a lot of files.
then i read that mobipocket can read zip files, so i created archives of the authors, like
lastname, firstname - name of series if complete (LIT).zip
and
lastname, firstname - name of series if complete (ORIG).zip

[onepieceman]

Opportunity for an app here? Or does one already exist?
I also have a bunch of files that have meta-data inside them (MP3s, WMAs, LITs, etc) which I don't think are very well catalogued at all in the PocketPC environment. Yes, I could put a lot of effort in to do this myself, but in practice I'm always going to forget and frankly it just isn't very easy. As memory card capacities increase, the amount I carry around on my PPC is getting to be quite large.

[terrypin]

i have one directory called "ebooks" and all books are in there.

Is that on your PC or PPC? What is its full path?

Good idea about the file-naming structure. But don't you end up with some long names? And why not subfolders instead, i.e.
\My Library\Elmore Leonard\GetShorty.lit
\My Library\Elmore Leonard\OutOfSight.lit
\My Library\Dickens\Great-Expectations.prc
etc

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Using iPAQ 2210 with WM2003.

[terrypin]

Opportunity for an app here? Or does one already exist?
I also have a bunch of files that have meta-data inside them (MP3s, WMAs, LITs, etc) which I don't think are very well catalogued at all in the PocketPC environment. Yes, I could put a lot of effort in to do this myself, but in practice I'm always going to forget and frankly it just isn't very easy. As memory card capacities increase, the amount I carry around on my PPC is getting to be quite large.

Agreed. If there is one, I'd like to know about it.

You didn't describe your structure.

--
Terry, West Sussex, UK
Using iPAQ 2210 with WM2003.

[chasmanor]

I use BookBag. http://www.wakefieldsoft.com/bookbag/.

[dMores]

Is that on your PC or PPC? What is its full path?

Good idea about the file-naming structure. But don't you end up with some long names? And why not subfolders instead, i.e.
\My Library\Elmore Leonard\GetShorty.lit
\My Library\Elmore Leonard\OutOfSight.lit
\My Library\Dickens\Great-Expectations.prc
etc
that would be on my PC.
i only transfer the files i need to my pda.
which is pretty cool, with mobipocket, since it can read ZIP files. smaller file-size and less clutter on the little screen :)

the idea of a subdirectory per author is pretty good. but that would mean i'd have LIT, PRC, HTML, DOC etc. all in one place which might confuse me :)
OTOH, i have a number of authors whose library is not yet complete, so i have a large number of files inside that ebook directory ... maybe i should start thinking of subdirs ...

thanks for the hint.

[juni]

I'm not organized, I just throw them all into \my documents\my library on my SD card. :oops: