theLibrarian Overview

theLibrarian is a very powerful book cataloguing and managing software that offers you a well organized space where dealing with your collections of digital (or physical) documents.

Create Libraries

At first launch, for user's convenience, the application will create an empty library (located into the default Documents folder of the hosting OS) whose shelves can begin to fill up with digital or physical documents. Anyway, it is possible to create as much libraries as needed: for example, one could create a library for reading books, another for the comics another for technical documents and so on.

To create a new library, select File > New Library… menu item (or the keyboard shortcut Command+N) and choose a location and a name in the dialog that follows.

Once created, any library can be customized at any time with an icon, a name and a description.

Populate the Shelves With books

There are many ways to add books to libraries:

  • a manual one, in which you add empty books records and type in basic informations (i.e. title and author(s)) by your self
  • several semi–automated ones, in which the application will look for:
  • a semi–automated one, in which the application will look for one or more books metadata in online catalogs starting from identifiers (ISBN Codes, DOI, EAN codes, GoogleBooks IDs, etc.) you provide
  • Whatever is the semi–automated path chosen, the result of the research will be displayed into the import window. Here, you can refine or add books informations and manage the grouping of displayed books before importing them into the destination library.

    Manage Informations About Books

    It is possible to add, modify or remove informations (including cover, reviews, keywords, notes, synopsis, etc.) from any book of a library by accessing its "anagraphic" record.

    Tha application features the retrieval of metadata informations and covers from several online books databases (i.e. Google Books, Amazon, iTunes, GoodReads, Library Thing, OpenLibrary and many others). Also, you can try to retrieve informations about a book searching by its title on Wikipedia or performing a search on Google based on its title, first author and publisher.

    The informations about each book can be viewed by toggling on the drawer at the right side of the bookshelves.

    It is easy to export a subset of the metadata associated to one or more books in several standard formats such as tab, comma –separated text and bibtex files; also you can create a basic catalog page in html.

    Last, but not least, the application supports the creation of bibliographic citations using the most common styles (IEEE, APA, MLA, etc.).

    By default the list of references will be saved into a Rich Text Format file; hold down the the option key while selecting a citation style from the menu to copy the formatted list onto the clipboard
    Keep Together Multiple Books Formats and Translations

    You can associate, during the import process or after it, multiple files to a book representing different formats of the same book. At time, it is allowed to add just one file for format (that is, you cannot add two epub files, for example, to the same book)

    Also, to each book can be added one or more files representing the translated version of the book. This being the case, it is possible to add two files with the same format provided that their languages differ (that is, you can add an epub file for french and another one for german to the same book).

    Find Books

    Use the search field (in the upper right corner of any library) or the filters present in the organizer bar to quickly find books. Learn More

    Also, several search criteria (i.e. format, date of publication, genre, author, publisher, contents, status and many others) can be combined by means of boolean operators to perform more accurate.

    Manage Informations About Authors and Publishers

    You can modify informations, as well as provide images or logos, about authors and publishers of books stored into the library in use.

    It is not possible to add authors or publishers independently from the library's books. This causes that such informations cannot be shared between libraries. This limitation is overcome by the simple export–import mechanism provided by the application.

    Create Collections Of Books

    Easily group books in one or more collections. There is no limitation to the number of collections a book can be associated to. Store detailed informations about the created collections.

    Read Books

    The application features a basic built–in reader supporting the following formats (more can be added to the next releases of theLibrarian): cbr, cbz, azw3, mobi, epub, djvu, pdf (Mac Only), rtf, rtfd, odt, chm, html book folder and html compressed (htmlz)

    Convert Books
    At time, it is possible to convert from epub to azw3 and viceversa and from mobi to epub and, for Mac only, between odt, rtf, rtfd and html. The contextual menu will display only those converters suitable to be used with the current book's format.
    Share Books

    It is possible to move books files from/to the cloud thanks to the built–in support for Dropbox and Google Drive

    Also, you can create a web site for your library "on-the-fly" and use the built–in web server to publish your books on the web and/or move them to mobile devices.

    Finally, the application lets you to send a book, optionally along with a message and a few basic informations, by mail.