Free cataloger for accounting books in the home (and not only) library. Perfect for accounting for e-books, because the kit comes with a lot of convenient chips for working with e-books.

With the advent of the computer in every home, many hitherto familiar things began to seem like some kind of anachronisms. So, for example, the computer has almost completely replaced devices such as radios from our homes, since today we can easily listen to radio online.

Or another example: armed with special programs, you can easily use the Internet.

But this universalization of computers affects not only the field of technology, but also many other aspects of our lives. A striking example of this is the huge popularity of e-books. Many PC users today are unwittingly beginning to increasingly prefer e-books to their paper counterparts. Their advantages are obvious:

1. availability (sold half the price, or even distributed free of charge);
2. ease of use (you can make many bookmarks with the ability to quickly switch, as well as automatically search for the desired piece of text);
3. compactness (do not require storage space outside the PC and have relatively small file sizes).

And it's far from full list… Needless to say, over time, the user may need to structure his electronic library, which is growing every day. So, today we’ll talk about how competently and in as soon as possible it is possible to organize on your computer a meaningful catalog of all your electronic (and paper, in principle) books.

Among the many cataloging programs, it is worth highlighting the free development of Caliber. To date, this is one of the best free apps, which allow you to create informative and complete catalogs of e-books, getting data about them from the Internet! That is, you do not have to manually fill in all the fields, starting with the abstract and ending with the date of publication of the book - the program will do it for you!

You can compare the functionality of the program with paid developments, such as Library Manager.

Comparison of the book cataloger Caliber with a paid analogue Library Manager

In addition to all of the above, Caliber has a number of other features that are often not available even in paid applications:

• built-in RSS aggregator;
• built-in content server;
• integration with readers;
• scan the hard drive for e-book files;
• presence of plugins.

Installation and preparation for work

On the official website of the program, there is a portable version of Caliber that does not require installation. If you are a fan of portable software, you can download this version.

Here we will consider the installation of the standard version of Caliber. Despite the English-language interface of the program installer, the installation process is not difficult and practically comes down to confirming that you have read the license agreement (tick "I agree") and, as usual, the subsequent button press Next.

After the installation is complete, Caliber will offer us a program setup wizard:

At the first stage, we will have to choose the interface language of our cataloger and the folder in which the created library will be stored. In the first case, it is clear that you need to select the Russian language :) But as for the library folder, I would not recommend using the defaults (the My Documents folder).

Since we plan to expand our library in the future, a lot of space should be allocated for it. This means that it is best to create a new folder not on the system partition of the hard drive, but on any logical one (for example, Disk D) with enough free memory.

At the second stage of the setup, Caliber will prompt us to select the device on which you usually read your e-books (it is assumed that you have a reader):

If your device is not in the list (or it does not exist at all, as in our case), then you need to do the following: in the "Manufacturers" list, select the "Generic" item, and in the list of devices that opens, mark any item you like (for example, smartphone).

We press “Next”, after which we are congratulated on the successful setup, and with a clear conscience we press the “Finish” button, after which we get to the main Caliber window ...

Interface Caliber

The program interface is quite simple and convenient. Visually, it can be divided into several parts. At the top is a ribbon with function buttons, which mostly have drop-down menus containing additional commands associated with a particular function.

The main space is occupied by a list of your e-books, which you can sort by any of the available columns. To the left of the list, you can see an additional sorting panel with a bunch of various filters, and to the right - appearance selected book and short information about it with links to the folder and the book itself.

The bottommost narrow strip under the catalog serves to display the status bar and three additional buttons that allow you to enable / disable additional side panels and the book demonstration panel (a little about it).

Working with Caliber

Let's proceed directly to creating a catalog of your books. In Caliber, a corresponding button is used to add a book. If you click not on it itself, but on the drop-down menu on the right, then we will be able to select one of possible ways additions:

Looking at the menu, we will see that the first three items allow you to scan the selected folders and automatically find in them all the books that will be added to the catalog. This method is convenient if you have a fairly extensive database, but get ready for the fact that your list will not contain any additional information about books - you will have to edit it manually later.

If you want to immediately get a convenient and most importantly informative catalog of your books, then it is better to choose the "Add by ISBN" method. ISBN is a unique international number of a book under which it is listed in global archives to automate its search.

If the book you want to add is quite new (published after the 90s), then there is a high probability that, knowing only its number, you will be able to get as much information about it as possible: title, annotation, author, and even cover. Accordingly, all this will not need to be entered manually;)

So, after pressing the button, the following window will appear in front of you:

This is actually the window for entering book numbers. I note that you can enter an almost unlimited number of ISBNs at the same time, but the larger the list, the longer it will take the program to find all the information you need.

Click "Ok" and wait until the scanning of Internet databases for the availability of data about the books you entered is completed. If such data is found, then a small window will appear in front of you offering a choice of the method and volume of downloads:

Since we want to get the most informative and beautiful catalog, I advise you to click the "Download both" button. After pressing it, a data loading task will be automatically generated (task completion is indicated in the lower right corner of the Caliber working window. Upon completion of the tasks, we will receive all the records about the books we need in our catalog.

The advantage of this method of adding books is that, having spent minimal effort on entering book numbers, we immediately get the most informative catalog at the output. In addition, in this way you can create a list of your paper publications for the census of your home library! The downside lies in the fact that electronic versions of books will then have to be attached manually :(.

Editing book metadata in Caliber

Another way to get information about the desired book from the Internet is to search by metadata, the main of which is the title of the book and its author. Let me explain with an example...

Let's say we want to add data about the books "War and Peace", which have been stored for a long time both on our bookshelf and on our hard drive :). We will proceed from the fact that you did not use the automatic addition of books to the catalog, so first we will have to go to the drop-down menu of the "Add Books" button and select the "Add an empty book" item there.

Now let's find the newly created book, select it and click the "Edit metadata" button on the top panel (if you used auto-add, then you just need to find the book you need and do the same).

In the window that opens, in the upper left part of it, we find the fields for entering the title and author of the book and register them, after which we click the "Download metadata" button in the lower part of the window.

The search for the book will start in the largest book depositories and bookstores Internet. To reduce the time of the search engine, I advise you to leave only Russian-language resources in the search list and large stores, such as Ozone, Amazon and Google.

Upon completion of the search, you will be presented with a table with its results:

If there are several results found, then we select the option that contains both the book cover and its abstract, that is, the information is as complete as possible. Highlight the desired row in the table and click the "Next" button. We will return to the metadata editing window, but we will see that almost all the fields in it are already filled in, which is what we needed!

Now we just have to click on the "Add format to this book" button (upper right corner) and select the e-book file that you want to associate with the created catalog entry.

Convert eBooks to Caliber

A fairly convenient and powerful e-book converter is built into the Caliber program. It allows you to convert between books in EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, LRF, MOBI, PDB, PDF, PMLZ, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT and ZIP formats. The only drawback, in my opinion, is the lack of support for the DJVU and CHM formats, which are quite widespread in our country.

In order to call the converter window, just click the "Convert Books" button:

A window will open in which you can quite fine-tune the conversion settings, such as the content of the book, its structure and appearance, but most users obviously do not want to delve into all the subtleties, so the main functions are placed in the main Metadata tab.

Here you only need to specify the output format of the book (upper right corner) and, if desired, change the metadata that the converted book will contain, and then click the "Ok" button.

Reading e-books in Caliber

As mentioned above, Caliber has a built-in e-book viewer. It supports most formats and can be used as the default viewer for any of them.

To access the book viewer, you need to select the desired book in the catalog and click the corresponding button - "View":

Managing the built-in viewer is quite simple. The main part of the space in it is occupied directly by the book itself, and additional controls are placed on the left side panel.

Among the buttons on this panel, we should note the button for displaying the contents of the book (if any) and the button for managing bookmarks. In the upper part of the viewer window you will find the fast navigation and full text search lines.

However, it is worth noting that, for example, when you try to open a PDF file, it will most likely open in another program that is assigned by the system as a viewer this format default. If you want a certain e-book format to still open through Caliber, then you will either have to uninstall the third-party viewer or reconfigure the file associations manually.

Those who read books on a computer or on various mobile devices, for sure, more than once had to face the fact that as the number of saved copies increases, it becomes more and more difficult to find the books you need quickly. To solve this problem and order a large number of e-books, you can create an e-library.

You can create your own library manually, but it is best to use special programs. One such program is the Caliber app.

Before you start working with this program, respectively, you need to install it and, at the initial stage of the installation, specify a place to store the future library.

Then you need to specify the type of device on which e-books will be read. If there are none, then just click the program to cancel.

After the program is installed, you can open it and start creating your e-book library. All books can be stored in one category called "All Books", or they can be divided into genres and other types. To do this, click on the virtual library button in the top menu of the program.

And in the submenu that opens, click on Create a virtual library.

Next, in the new window, in the first line, you need to give the name of the new catalogs, and in the second, specify the tag by which new books will fall into this catalog. Click on the OK button in the lower right corner of the window and get our new library directory.

The created catalog can be filled with various books, this is done simply, click on the add book button and find on the computer the place where our book is stored, select it and click on the open button.

Books can also be added in whole folders, archives, and in other ways, this will be done in the submenu that opens when you click on the arrow next to the "Add Book" button

Once a book has been added, it will appear in the All Books section, where you can edit the title, author, publisher, rate, and so on. This is done using the "Edit metadata" button. In the window that opens, we edit the necessary data. All data of the book can be left unchanged, however, in order for the new book to get into the required library directory, in the "Tags" item, enter the same tag as the directory in which you want to place this book. After the tag is added, the book automatically gets into the appropriate library directory.

The book can be read using the Caliber program itself (if the format is supported), this is done using the browse button, or you can open it with another program. In order to find out where the desired book is stored on the computer, you need to select it in the list with the left mouse click, then right-click on it and select the "open folder" submenu. A new window will open where our book is stored and it can be opened for reading by another reader program, such as STDU Viewer. These are not tricky ways and you can create your own library.

Creating a library is not all that Caliber is capable of, apart from cataloging and editing the metadata of books, it also allows you to convert a book to another format, changing the size and type of font, metadata and structure, etc. This is done using the "Convert Books" button. Along with the usual way of adding books, they can be downloaded from the Internet using the "Download Books" function, where a book can be found by author's name or by title in a list of online stores and other resources. All books contained in the Caliber library can be downloaded directly from the program to a mobile device connected to a computer. To do this, select the desired book in the list with the left mouse click, then right-click on it and select the "Send to device" submenu. Another nice bonus of the program is the ability to receive news from various Internet sites, this is done in the "Collect news" menu.

Distribution: free.
Operating system: Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10.
Interface: Russian.
Program website caliber-ebook.com/download

How to create the easiest e-library with ResCarta

The first time I heard about ResCarta was at one of the foreign conferences. After the report, I approached the developers to talk and was surprised to find out that this system is already being used in Russia, in the Library of St. I contacted Andrey Sokolov, who implemented ResCarta, and found out that the system solves its class of tasks well, is easy to install (that's why he did not contact the developers) and is successfully operated by them.
Since the main question for beginners to create digital libraries is “where to start?”, As an answer, I suggest starting with installing and mastering ResCarta. For many, this is enough to solve their problems.

What it is: ResCarta is a freely distributed electronic library system (ELS), that is software, designed to manage and store digital content, on the basis of which DL is created.
(Since the wrong definition of ELS is often used in Russia, I want to note that I adhere to the point of view developed during the DELOS project. Within the framework of this project, a system of concepts (Digital Library Reference Model) was developed related to what we usually call an electronic library) .

Where to apply: To create a small electronic library (100 - 1000 documents) consisting of texts and/or images. For example, scanned and recognized (or unrecognized) books or magazines. This may be a collection of old books, photographs, notes, etc. An electronic library created with the help of ResCarta can be easily provided with access via the Internet.

Required qualifications for installation: Advanced user.
Where is already working:
1. In Scientific Library St. Petersburg State University,
Collection - Periodicals of the 18th century.
2. Los Angeles Public Library

What are the advantages: It is quite simple to create an electronic library and organize access to it via the Internet or Intranet. Completely free software.
A full text search is performed (if recognized texts are included in the electronic library), additional search keywords can be added to each document. The pages of the book are issued sequentially, which makes it impossible to download the entire document. For copyrighted documents this can be very important. Images are scaled and rotated. The application is developed in Java and can be used under any operating system.
It is possible to integrate ResCarta with other library systems based on the OAI PMH protocol.

What are the cons: Very simple interface, modest functionality, the search is carried out only by exact match without morphology and truncation.

The ResCarta software consists of two applications. ResCarta Web and ResCarta Toolkit. ResCarta Toolkit allows you to create digital collections. Collections can include files in the following formats: JPG, TIFF, single-layer PDF (images), and dual-layer PDF (text+images).
With the help of ResCarta Toolkit tools, you step by step go through the five stages of creating an electronic library
Uploading digital objects and creating metadata
Converting data to ResCarta format
Adding and editing additional search metadata
Constructing collections from loaded objects
Full text indexing.
Access to these collections is carried out through the ResCarta Web application, which allows you to view ResCarta database objects and search by metadata through the Web interface.
To facilitate installation, I suggest using the instruction in Russian, kindly provided by N. Kozlova and S. Balyakin.

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Here we have collected several links to programs for transcoding books from one text format to another, for creating and modifying books, for compiling a home library, and for reading books of various formats on a computer.

Screen readers

• ICE Book Reader FB2, EPUB, PRC, RTF, TXT, HTML, LIT, CHM
  Official website of the program.
• FBReader Supported text formats: EPUB, FB2

Since May 2015, a port of the Android version of the program for Windows has become available. As long as it the only a program for Windows XP and Windows 7 that allows you to download books from OPDS libraries (online catalogs) .

On the official website of the program, you can download the version of the program for Windows 7. The version compiled by fans of Cool Reader for Windows XP can be downloaded.

All these programs are freely distributed and have a user-friendly interface. Thanks to the ability to select the color of text and background, font size, you can create the most eye-friendly reading mode. Most programs display two pages of a book on the screen at once, with a background image imitating an open book.

Text format converters

If the reader you purchased does not support reading format files FB2, it becomes necessary to convert this format to another one understandable by your device. For Sony Reader, for example, you need a converter program from FB2 in EPUB, and for Amazon Kindle - from FB2MOBI.

• Fb2ePub Converts from FB2 in EPUB
  Official website of the program.
• FB2MOBI Converts from FB2 in MOBI
  Official website of the program.
• FB2 to Any And FB2 to Any Converts from FB2 in txt, rtf, rb and lit and back.
  Official website of the program.

Universal book size converter Hamster free ebook converter completely free. This is a powerful program for interconverting FB2, EPUB, MOBI, TXT, LIT, RLF and some other formats.

The interface of the program is very simple, concise and at the same time beautiful. At the first step of working with the program, you need to select one or more files for conversion, at the next step, you need to select the manufacturer of the e-book and use it for a list of acceptable formats, or immediately select the format for conversion. Next, the process of converting files is shown, after the end, you can either open a folder with finished files, or return to the list and add new book files.

Official site of the program: http://ru.hamstersoft.com.

If the program is not downloaded from the official site, then it can be obtained on the site http://soft-file.ru/

Unfortunately, it is not possible to convert graphics files (DJVu and most PDF documents) to FB2 with a single program. If you nevertheless set yourself such a task, you will first have to recognize the text (using OSR programs), manually correct the errors, and only after that create the FB2 file in the editor.

You can also convert EPUB - FB2 - MOBI (PRC) text formats to each other with the Caliber librarian program described below.

Book editors

Fiction Book Editor- perhaps the most powerful program for creating and editing files FB2. The program provides a text mode for direct editing of a book, inserting titles, images, a code view mode and a mode for editing the information header of a file.
Official website of the program.

Sigl- visual editor of EPUB books. Allows you to compose an EPUB book using only the mouse (selecting, copying, dragging text fragments) and without going into the details of the XML code. The program interface is only in English.
Official website of the program.

Librarians (library managers)

Caliber- a fairly powerful program for creating a home library. It allows you to arrange books by shelves, authors, show duplicates of works of different formats in one item, has a built-in format converter and a book file viewer.
Official website of the program.

MyHomeLib- a program for managing collections of e-books in any format. Allows you to sort books by author or series, read books directly from the program, work with archives of the Librusek library, convert books from format to format, search for books in the collection by several parameters. The program is absolutely free.
Official website of the program.

MyRuLib- a free (free and open) program for organizing a home library of e-books fb2, epub and other formats. The program can be used to work with network libraries or catalog your own collection of files.
Official website of the program.

Another converter librarian with the ability to organize a home OPDS server is freeLib. Discussion of the program and download link is on the forum The-ebook.org

Search system Book Library- a program for downloading and storing books in the home library.

TinyOPDS- OPDS server. The term "OPDS directories" is discussed in the Libraries section. This is a program for creating a home OPDS directory. It scans book files in a certain folder of the disk and arranges them by genres / authors / novelties. It is very convenient to download books to mobile devices and electronic readers with wi-fi support by running the TinyOPDS program on desktop computer connected to a wi-fi router.

The program is a text corrector.

If you copy text from a web page into a notepad to view later on an e-book, it often contains extra line breaks, spaces, and hyphens.

The program for reading the reader with an abundance of such "garbage" in the text often begins to take individual words within a sentence for chapter headings, placing them in the center of the page. Sometimes even on each page there are only two or four words in bold type. A simple corrector program allows you to remove such "garbage" from the text.

Site about e-books and tablets

Programs for working with e-books

The program is designed to store e-books in various formats in the electronic library with the ability to read them directly from the program as well as convert from format to format (numerous settings allow you to interfere with styles during conversion, integrate custom fonts, etc.). Books are placed in a special library folder, a database of output data is maintained. Additional information about the book can also be downloaded from the Internet by ISBN. Support for multiple book formats including fb2, html, azw, azw1, cbr, cbz, chm, epub, imp, lit, lrf, lrx, mobi, odt, oebzip, opf, pdb, pdf, pml, pmlz, prc, rar, rb, rtf, snb, tpz, txt and zip. Books in many formats can be read directly in Caliber using the included E-book viewer application. It is possible to synchronize the program with a huge list of devices for reading e-books, including all Sony readers.

The program is free. Works under Windows, Mac OS X, Linux. There is a portable version for Windows. Russian interface is present. Download link .

A program for managing collections of e-books in various formats. View and search collections of books in a tree-like list. Work with lists of books sorted by any column. Ability to read fb2, html, doc, txt without installation additional programs(uses included in the distribution program AlReader). MyHomeLib supports fb2 import from folders and zip archives, the ability to work with any type of file. Search by author, book title, series, genre, etc. Export of fb2-books in fb2.zip, txt, lrf format, it is possible to connect e-pub and pdf converters. Support for custom collection formats in xml and inpx format. Working with Lib.rus.ec and Flibusta.net library archives.

This application allows you to convert files from the fb2 format, the most common in Russia, to the ePub format, which understands most e-books of the most different manufacturers. After installation, the program can work both in command line mode and using a graphical shell. Added to the context menu: by right-clicking on a file with an fb2 extension, you can select "convert to ePub", and after a few seconds an ePub file is generated with an entry in the same folder as the source. Russian fonts are integrated by default. Files with Russian-language books are easily read on Sony PRS-T1 and PRS-T2 devices.

The Fb2ePub program is distributed under a "freeware-artistic" license (together with the source code), which means free use and distribution, subject to attribution. The Windows operating system is supported, there are separate versions of the program for 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Russian interface. Download link .

This application can be used to rename, move and transcode fb2 files. Fast recognition of FB2 file metadata. Working with nested directories Support for character/string replacement tables for each profile (for example, for transliteration). Support for an unlimited number of encodings for transcoding files (everything supported by the Windows operating system, from Unicode to KOI8-r, at the user's choice). Renaming genres. Working with fb2 and fb2.zip format files. The most common use of this program is to check the compliance of the fb2 format book that the user has for compliance with the standard (fb2 validation).

The program is designed to work with the Windows operating system, the Russian interface is present. FB2Toolbox is free. Download link .

Allows you to create pdf-documents from almost any Windows program (any graphics and text editors, any database management system, any browser, any scientific and system programs etc.). The main thing is that the program menu has the ability to print a document. The program is convenient to use for converting to pdf from any other format. To convert, it is enough to select Bullzip Free PDF Printer in the proposed list of printers when sending a document for printing (or mark it as the default printer in the system, then you do not need to select anything).

Absolutely correct work with Cyrillic. Depending on the settings, the application allows you to write pdf documents to one file or to different ones. It is possible to view the document immediately after its generation. Convenient graphical interface for settings. A large number of various settings: text resolution, image quality, print area size (size of a virtual sheet of paper), it is possible to protect received documents with a password, 128-bit encryption. You can specify transparency, add watermarks. In addition to pdf, you can create files in graphic formats bmp, jpg, pcx, png, tiff. Convenient application of the program - converting doc files and others to pdf format with setting the parameters corresponding to the screen of the Sony PRS-1, PRS-T2 e-book and any other that understands this format.

Bullzip Free PDF Printer is running operating system Windows (including the 64-bit version), there is a Russian interface. The program is free. Download link .

Program for creating and editing fb2 files. There is access to editing the text of the book and the information header of the file, the ability to insert headers, images. There is a code view mode. Fiction Book Editor on Windows Vista and Windows 7 requires MSXML 4.0 pre-installed. The graphical interface of the application is a working window, in the upper part of which there is a standard menu and a toolbar. Below them is a working panel, with which you can assign labels to book elements, as well as make links and footnotes. Most of the working window is occupied by the main text editing window, in which you can work in one of three modes: description editing, book text editing (WYSIWYG - all formatting is displayed), source mode (access to all tags and file structure). At the bottom is a message line that displays the structure of the currently edited element or validator message.

Program for creating and editing electronic books in ePub format. Working with the program is visually intuitive, the user does not need knowledge of ePub and XML formats. Full support for UTF-8 encoding and the EPUB 2 standard is provided. Sigil has a user-friendly graphical interface that allows you to work in visual book editing mode and in code mode. It is possible to validate the file being edited (verifies compliance with the ePub standard) using the built-in FlightCrew EPUB validator application.

If you know of other programs that you are used to using when working with e-books, write to us about it. We plan to replenish this section with interesting, free Russian-language programs in the future.

Asking a question for the first time? Read How to ask the right question. Be sure to include the model name, firmware version, application package name and version. Describe what actions led to incorrect operation of the device.