calibre is a ebook library management application. Its features are divided into the following categories:
- Library Management
- Format conversion (all major ebook formats can be converted from)
- Syncing to ebook reader devices
- Fetching news from the web and converting it into ebook form
- Viewing many different ebook formats
- Giving you access to your book collection over the internet using just a browser/email client
Library Management
calibre is primarily a ebook cataloging program. It manages your ebook collection for you. It is designed around the concept of the logical book, i.e. a single entry in the database that may correspond to ebooks in several formats.
calibre support sorting the books in its database by:
- Title
- Author
- Date
- Publisher
- Rating
- Size (Max size of all formats)
- Series
It also supports extra metadata fields that can be searched on:
- Comments: A general purpose field that can be used to describe the book, add notes on it, etc.
- Tags: A flexible system to categorize books. You can tag any book with any custom tag to indicate subject, read status, category, etc.
The database view also supports filtering by searching on the metadata. You can perform advanced searching on individual metadata fields by clicking the advanced search button to the left of the search bar.
You can export subsets of the books in your collection by using the Save to disk button.
You can fetch metadata from the internet for a book based on its ISBN number or its title/author, instead of manually entering the metadata. You can also fetch a cover image based on the ISBN number.
Format Conversion
calibre supports conversion from a dozen different ebook formats to LRF and EPUB. An graphical interface to the conversion software can be accessed by clicking the "Convert E-books" button. The commandline access is via the command any2lrf and any2epub. The list of all supported formats. The conversion is very powerful and supports advanced typesetting features like tables, dropcaps, inline images, embedded fonts, etc.
Syncing to E-reader Devices
calibre has a modular device driver design that makes adding support for different e-reader devices easy. At the moment, it has support for a large number of devices, the complete list of which is here. Syncing supports updating metadata on the device from metadata in the library and creation of collections on the device based on the tags defined in the library. If a book has more than one format available, calibre automatically chooses the best format when uploading to the device.
Fetching News
calibre can automatically fetch news from websites or RSS feeds, format the news into a ebook and upload to a connected device. At the moment there is support for generating LRF/EPUB ebooks. The ebooks include the *full* versions of the articles, not just the summaries. Supported news sites are the following:
- Newsweek
- New York Times
- The BBC
- The Economist
- The Wall Street Journal
- ESPN
- and many, many more...
The news fetching subsystem has a modular design, which makes it easy to add support for more sites. If you are interested in adding support for a site, read the User Manual. Once you have created a recipe, consider sharing it with other users by attaching it to User Recipes.
Viewing E-books
calibre has a built-in ebook viewer that can display all the major ebook formats.
Content server
calibre has a built-in web server that allows you to access your ebook collection using a simple browser from any computer anywhere in the world. It can also email your books and downloaded news to you automatically. It has support for mobile devices, so you can browse your collection and download books from your smartphone, Kindle, etc.
