The luggage tag icon activates the tag browser view. More on this later.
The book toggles seeing the details panel along the right.
The spinning progress icon and the word 'Jobs:' is one of the most important pieces of the interface. Whenever calibre is working on something (conversion, sending books to the reader, downloading news, etc.) this icon will spin, and the number next to jobs will display the number of jobs (activities) calibre is working on. You can click the icon to expose more detail about the jobs in progress.
Common Tasks
Let's take a look at a few common activities:
Organizing your e-book collection
Conversion
Downloading news from websites
Dealing with devices
Viewing e-books
Task 1: Organizing
The first part of organizing is getting your e-books into calibre's library. Click the 'Add books' button in the tool bar at the top of the window, then select the e-books you would like calibre to import. When calibre imports your e-books it makes a copy of the book, storing it in the storage location you specified during initial setup. Once you've added an e-book, calibre doesn't need further access to the original file.
During an e-book import, calibre tries to read the metadata from the e-book. Metadata is information about the book that is stored within the e-book itself. Different formats support different information. Often the information is incomplete or just plain wrong. Don't worry calibre makes it easy to fix this. Select the book whose metadata you want to change by clicking the book title in the main window. Then click 'Edit metadata' on the top tool bar (to the right of the 'Add books' button). The metadata editor will open.
The easy way to correct the metadata is to fill in the title and author, then click the 'Download metadata' button at the bottom center of the Edit Metadata dialog. Calibre will display possible matches for the information entered. If there is more than one match select the entry that looks like the best match. A lot of information should be filled in now.
Above the 'Download metadata' button and to the top, right of the cover image is the 'Download cover' button. If the book doesn't have a cover showing or if you don't like the cover, click it to try to have calibre download one from the internet.
Now that you have your e-books in calibre there are a few different ways to find an e-book in your collection. Searching is one of the fastest ways. Above the library table there is a search bar with a binoculars icon to the left of the search text input field. Think of it like having Google built into calibre. Just type a few key words into the Search text field. Try the author, title, series, or anything else from the e-book's metadata. E-books matching your search terms are shown as filtered results. The other e-books are still in your collection, but they won't be shown if the search expression doesn't find them.
You can also use the tag browser to search your collection. Along the left side of the window is the tag browser. If you don't see anything to the left of the library table, click the luggage tag icon in the lower right of the main window between the curved arrow and the book icon. A list will appear to the left of the library. It allows for you to display specific subsets of your collection to be shown in the main window. Clicking the disclosure triangle to the left of 'Author, 'Series', 'Publisher', 'News' or 'Tags' allows you to display just the e-books matching the criteria. Notice that as you enable items in the tag browser search queries are added to the search bar. The tag browser is really just an easy way to create search
queries. You could type the query directly into the search bar and see the same result.
Task 2: Conversion
This is arguably the most useful, and most complex, feature calibre offers. Three of the most popular e-book readers today are the Amazon Kindle, the Sony Reader and the Barns & Noble Nook. Unfortunately, not all of these devices read the same kinds of e-books. This mess is like the one in the music world where you might find such formats as WMA, MP3 and AAC. In e-books, the same confusion existsthe Tower of eBabel, as some call it.
2.1: Background
If you are only buying e-book content from the store designed for your readerfor example, Amazons Kindle Store or Sonys Reader Storeyou dont need to worry about any of this. But there are very good reasons why you should know about the major formats, what formats your reader supports, and how to convert between formats.
In addition to regular e-books stores, many online sites offer free e-books, from public domain to texts offered at no charge by well known and lesser known authors. The 'Get books' icon in the toolbar allows you to easily comparision shop by opening a store search dialog. This will search many different stores (uncheck or check the stores you want it to use on the left) stores helping you find the best price and the right format for the book you're looking for. Please note that this feature connects you to a third party, the store, so any issues related to a purchase should be directed to the store itself calibre is not part of this exchange.