[Beetzart]

I use DirListPro which produces a file (Word or Excel) with an overview of all the directories, subdirectories and files/books in them. I store this file in dropbox so I always can find out wherever I am whether a book is in my collection or not.

Interesting and useful question. I only use Calibre to read .epub books, and Foxit Reader for pdf files (I prefer to use the old version 4.3 from year 2010!)

When adding a book or essay to my hard drive, I am careful with its file name. I save it with all details I believe I will need. The format is similar to:

The Book Main Title; its Subtitle (YEAR & edition info) - AuthorFirstName LastName.ext

I sort my collection of 10,000+ mostly (98%) non-fiction books into abt. 30 top level folders such as:

Arts | Banking & Finance & Economics | Collected Writings | Conspiracies | Countries | Education | Fiction | History | Human Nature | Human Rights | Law & Constitutions | Leadership | Literature | Media | Medical | Nature & Climate Change | Organizations | People | Philosophy | Politics | Psychology | Spiritual | Technology | War & Security & Defence & Spying |

Most have subfolders, for example : Education : has subfolders -

Critical Reading | E-Prime | General Semantics | Language | Montessori | People | Reference | Science | Toulmin Model

The People folder is for individual authors who have a lot of books/essays, example: Albert Jay Nock


Still all the above is only for my peace of mind - I rarely need to wander through my folders.
I use the free Windows program called "Everything Search"

It indexes every file name (800,000+ files on my hard drives) on NTFS formatted hard drives - and finds file names matching any partial name or wild card search within milliseconds. It takes less than a minute for the first index creation when first running the program, thereafter auto-indexing any addition and change.

I estimate I use Everything Search 50 to 100 times a day (of course, not just looking for books, but for any file or group of files I need to find and open).

Hope that helps!

[NeverWinter]

Interesting and useful question...

I've been using everything as well in past weeks (really really really a must have tool) along with TreeSize premium (https://www.jam-software.com/treesize/).

i use it mostly to find out the duplicates of ebooks and it does it in a very fancy way..


anyway how do you cope with the lenght of the folders/name?

For example

E:\3. Ebooks Collection 2.0\2. High Fantasy Fiction\Collections\Forgotten Realms Universe\The Legend of Drizzt\7. Neverwinter (4 Books) [Complete]



or

E:\2. Bibliotheca Alexandrina\2. Ancient & Classical Civilizations\Various\Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World




Lots of time im hitting the maximum lenght for a path, i can bypass it by renaming the main folder or by cut and paste but it remains something annoying in my point of view (some sharing programs don't let you download files with 300 characters path)

I am a librarian and I use Calibre with custom columns and my own extensive system of genre tags and subject tags.
People not using Calibre are really missing out on the versatile options of this incredible software.
You will have no problem with path lengths and stuff like that, because Calibre takes care of that for you.
You can sort your entire collection on the fly, you can create virtual sub-collections.
You can add plugins that can check the integrity of your library and point out missing data, or possible mistakes.
By clicking an author name or title Calibre can open your browser with extra information about them.
Calibre can search for better covers, You can add personal information, reminders etc. etc.

I really recommend using Calibre. It is a simple to use program with tons of cool and useful options to manage your library.
Don't maintain your collection manually when there is such an excellent tool available.
Calibre will make maintaining your collection pure joy.

im really old fashioned...i store mine on my PC. however as for how to sort it...i am struggling to decide of how to do it. i might do it by author. now for things on the religion and the occult i keep that separate...as a hobby i have a great interest in all things religion and the occult.

When I have a series of books I create a folder with the name of the series. Then in it, there are folders named the title of the series with a number and title of book . The file itself is named title of the series with a number, title of book and name of the author.
Books, that are not part of the series are named just by a title and the author.
If I have more books of one author, name the file the name of the author and the rest goes the same.

I don't use Calibri, because it create another file with all the book files in it, that are in Calibri and I don't like i, tat is duplicated