Howdy self-hosters!
I’ve got a huge pile of eBooks flying around here: poetry, scientific literature, magazines, comics, teaching materials, RPG rule books - it’s a wildly mixed bag. I’m still looking for a self-hosted solution to make it more accessible and get an overview of what I actually have. (Calibre looks promising!)
My question here is not about software, though, but about organisation at the filesystem level: what folder and file name structure have you established for your eBooks? Do you just dump everything into one single folder and let the software do the rest? Do you create sections by genre (“Crime”, “Fantasy”, “Young adult”, like the libraries do it) or application (job-related, hobby-related, cooking, …)? Does it matter at all?
I use calibre Web automated (CWA). I don’t concern myself much with the filesystem level structure, but it’s author/work + metadata for other details.
If you start making the fs the sorting mechanism, you end up with books that don’t belong anywhere or have too ma y categories. I"be been down that road.
Skill issue ! There’s a good balance between the 2. If you only rely on one organization logic you will later regret it ^^.
Putting everything in one folder/directory and let the metadata speak for itself is just calling for a nightmare later one (same goes for folder/directory structure without metadata!).
I am not doing that. I’ll guess here that you aren’t familiar with the way calibre Web and CWA work?