Caliber is the program to organize your e-books. You can easily transfer digital books to an e-reader or tablet. Moreover, you choose the format yourself, so that you can use the files on any device without any problems. To top it off, you also create your own e-books! We explain how to use the various functions of caliber.
E-books have the necessary advantages over traditional books. You no longer have to lug around kilos of paper on holiday and it also saves a lot of cupboard space. All you need is a portable device that you can use to open the digital books. Many tablets are suitable for this, but for reading purposes an e-reader is a better option. E-readers often use electronic ink. The screen does not emit light and you are not bothered by light reflection and reflection. The reading experience therefore largely corresponds to real paper. You can purchase e-books from most online booksellers, such as bol.com, AKO, Selexyz and Bruna. There are also free sites on the web. Just take a look at Gutenberg.org and ManyBooks.net. You will only find old works here. Many recent titles can be found via download channels. Often physical books are copied to the computer with a scanner, after which they appear in digital form on these download networks. Please bear in mind that current copyright law does not clarify whether it is legal to download copies of copyrighted e-books for your own use. Sharing protected files is prohibited in any case, so you should not use bittorrent or other peer-to-peer networks. Fortunately, there are plenty of other ways to get eBooks, making it tempting to keep hundreds of titles on your computer. Thanks to caliber, you can keep your collection organized with a virtual bookcase.
Copy protection
In an effort to prevent piracy, publishers provide most e-books with DRM (Digital Right Management). This strict security ensures that you cannot just make copies, because a personal user account is linked to the files. Usually it is only possible to use the digital book on a limited number of devices. Lending a title to a friend is therefore no longer an issue. Unfortunately, caliber is unsuitable for opening DRM-protected eBooks. You need the Adobe Digital Editions program for this. Since DRM basically punishes the paying user, some reading enthusiasts remove this copy protection with a special plug-in within caliber. However, such cracking methods are prohibited by law. As a more customer-friendly alternative, publishers use a watermark to protect their eBooks. This contains personal information of the original purchaser. This makes it easy to trace the perpetrator in large-scale uploading practices.
1. Install and set up
Caliber (formerly Libprs500) is an open source program that has been around since 2006. In recent years, the freeware has become a versatile tool for managing your e-book collection. You can find the latest version at Caliber-eBook.com. Caliber is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. There is also a portable edition, which you do not need to install, but can be used directly from, for example, a USB stick. This course is based on the Windows version. If you are using Windows XP, Vista, or 7, you can easily install the program from an msi file. Once you have completed the installation wizard steps, launch the freeware. The caliber welcome wizard will appear on your screen. Select the Dutch language and indicate in which folder you want to save e-books. click on Next one and indicate which e-reader or tablet you use. If the correct type is not in the list, select Generic. click on Next one and Finish to open the main window. Incidentally, caliber releases an update almost every week that fixes bugs and adds small new features. You will be notified of this in the program, after which you will have to manually download and install the new version.
Books that you open within caliber are saved in a separate folder.
2. Import eBooks
There is already one book in caliber. This is an ePub file with an English manual of the program. If you don't need it, you can easily delete this e-book: select the manual and press the Delete key. You will receive a warning that the selected book will be permanently removed from the library and from the hard drive. Confirm with OK.
To add new books to the virtual bookcase, click at the top left Add books and select an e-book file on your computer. Then choose To open. Incidentally, it is possible to import multiple files at the same time. Caliber supports all common formats, including ePub, pdf and mobi. You will see the imported books appear in the overview.
You add an unlimited number of books in caliber.
3. Sort Options
Especially in large book collections it is difficult to pick the right title. You therefore use the field To search for example, if you want to find all the titles of a particular writer. You can also easily search by title or publisher. Type a search term and use the button To go! to view the results. On the left you will find different sections. With this you can sort the overview by author, language, file format, publisher, labels (tags) and rating. This pane is useful, among other things, if you want to quickly view all English-language books or if you are only interested in the ePub format. You can also enable the cover browser if desired. To do this, press the keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt+B. Use the arrow keys to scroll through the library using book covers. Once you press Enter, you will see the details about the selected title on the right.
The cover browser is a great way to view your eBook collection.
