Top 10: Personal library software

2024. Calibre added support for new Kobo color e-readers



Ebook management software Calibre has updated its Kobo driver to add support for the new color Kobo devices. Besides, the new version of the software includes other new features. In the Edit book dialog now you can add a setting to control cursor width under Preferences->Editor settings. The Regex-function mode allows to show a confirmation popup when closing the function editor when there are unsaved changes. Spell check now allows to exclude words in ALL CAPS or with numbers or in camelCase/snake_case from the list of words. The search now allows easy inverting the current search via the right click menu on the search box.


2023. CLZ Books allows to use multiple folder levels



In the grand tapestry of book cataloging, the team at Collectorz.com has crafted an update for its CLZ Books app that is nothing short of revolutionary—at least, as revolutionary as organizing a digital book collection can possibly be. Imagine, if you will, the joy of finally being able to sort your virtual shelves with not just a single layer of folders (as if you were some sort of single-minded barbarian) but with multiple levels of folders, mind you! Where once you were restricted to choosing between Author, Publisher, Subject, and Location folders, you are now free to stack and nest these folders like a Russian doll of bibliographic order. Want to see all the works of a specific Publisher and then organize them by Author? Done. Craving a look at Publication Year sliced by Author? It's yours! This latest version even arrives with a suite of pre-packaged, multi-layered folder favorites—Publisher/Author, Publication Year/Author, Purchase Year/Store—to satisfy even the most refined cataloging whims. With just a quick tap on a folder favorite, you can navigate from a Publisher to the corresponding Authors, and a further tap will reveal books by that delightful combination of Publisher and Author. It’s organization on a galactic scale, wrapped up in a few cunning clicks.

2022. Personal library software All My Books removed all Amazon integrations



The new version All My Books 3.2 has removed all Amazon integration due to an Amazon's lawyer request. Instead of it the program added support of OpenLibrary.org for the book details download. Besides the developers improved "Get large cover" function, added ISBNdb.com support as a backup source for searching by ISBNs, improved Goodreads support for the book details, optimized images loading in the "Select book" dialog (lazyload), fixed import book details from bol.com, added several alternative HTML templates for the book details - "Big Blue Green", "Collector Black", "Sidelined Gray", "This One's Brown". "Table of Contents" field is now displayed as a bulleted list in the book details area.


2017. LibraryThing gets own Android app



LibraryThing, the online service for managing personal libraries, has launched an app for Android. It replicates the iPhone/iOS app. You can explore and search your library overall and by collection, add books, CDs and DVDs by scanning barcodes (barcode scanning is EXTREMELY FAST), add items by searching by title, author, ISBN, etc., browse and upload covers using your Android’s camera and perform minor editing, such as adding books to collections and rating them (major editing is done via a link to LibraryThing.com). It’s designed for a phone but will also function on your Android tablet. Additionally, LibraryThing is offering lifetime memberships to anyone who uses the app.


2015. BookONO adds a PDF and EPub reader



Etopian has released a new version of its BookONO E-book Manager with PDF reader and EPub reader. It also features upgrade to Qt5, author filters, notes and toolbar for notes, button to the notes toolbar to add current date and time, cloud syncing between all three platforms, categories and tags. BookONO does not attempt to reinvent or rewrite Calibre’s programming, instead calling Calibre to do many of the tasks that Calibre already does… We hope in the future to rewrite slow aspects of Calibre, naively in C++; but leave the rest of the job to Calibre which Kovind Goyal has obviously put a lot of thought into and we’re grateful for that.


2015. Adobe Digital Editions app for the iPad released



Adobe has launched an iPad version of its personal library organizer, Adobe Digital Editions. The app supports ePUB, including ePUB3, as well as PDF formats. The app has a utilitarian design, as Adobe has not made significant efforts to showcase the app’s capabilities in an exciting manner. Once installed, users will find a straightforward guide to reading ePUBs and PDFs. Adobe is not unique in its lackluster presentation of its own eBook products. Apple’s iBooks in the iBooks Store rarely leverage iBooks Author effectively, indicating that the company’s own publishing tools may not be fully developed. Adobe Digital Editions will be useful for readers who want to access eBooks from their local library.


2011. Alfa Ebooks Manager 2.4 adds MOBI support



Alfaebooks developers continue to improve their book management program Alfa Ebooks Manager. Today they have launched the new version of the personal library software Alfa Ebooks Manager 2.4. The updated version adds MOBI books support (now you can parse all metadata from MOBI books) and provides the following new features: Dark Theme,  ability to delete book files in the program interface, new Metallic bookshelf view, enhanced List Views with Author links, new option to turn off instant search (because in large libraries instant search could be rather slow), optimized Scan, Parser and Web Update tools (faster, more stable), multilingual interface (English, Deutsch, French, Russian, Portuguese, Dutch, Czech), new e-Library Statistics Viewer,  new query "Books with " (it allows to detect books that have linked files, but these files where deleted or renamed or moved).


2010. Personal library software Calibre improved mobile device support



Kovid Goyal has released a new version of his library organizer Calibre 0.7. It includes enhancements to the user interface and performance, along with improved integration with device drivers. When connecting to devices, Calibre now stores the metadata it retrieves from the files on the device. This means that on subsequent connections, Calibre will quickly build the list of books on the device. If you prefer to maintain large collections of books on your device, you will find this feature invaluable. An experimental driver for the iPad enables you to connect the iPad to your computer with Calibre running. The driver operates by utilizing iTunes in the background, so you will also need to have iTunes installed and your iPad configured within it. The conversion engine now supports Unicode characters in RTF input documents and automatically converts ligatures for PDF input documents. The e-book viewer now features built-in dictionary lookup. You can now effortlessly create a catalog of all books in your Calibre library by clicking the arrow next to the convert button. The catalog can be generated in several formats: XML, CSV, EPUB and MOBI, with the possibility of future formats via plugins.


2008. Delicious Library 2 gets HTML export



Mac-centric personal library software Delicious Library. There are over a hundred new features in DL2, along with hundreds more bug fixes. Specifically, the software introduced an HTML export capability. Clicking an item in this web-based library will show a pop-up at the bottom of the browser containing description details that the user has entered in DL2 or retrieved from Amazon, as well as the user's rating of the media. It's reasonable to assume that this display will be customizable, allowing the user to choose whether information like item ratings or even sections of the library appear in exported HTML sites. As if sharing your library on the web isn't enough, the sites that DL2 generates are very iPhone-compatible. This includes the various sections of the library and the pop-up informational display, though there are (naturally) slight UI variations.