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Load2Learn – Making Curriculum Materials Accessible.
Hello. Welcome to this Load2Learn video on Managing your E-book Collections with
Calibre. In this video we will have a look at how to download them, install Calibre,
how to import books into Calibre, how to copy the files that are organised by Calibre to
your e-reader, how you can use Calibre to manage your files on the e-reader and how
to convert the different file e-book formats between one another. So first, let’s talk
about how to download and install it.
If you simply search for Calibre on the internet, Calibre will be one of the first options.
From then you can go and download it to your computer. Calibre works on most computer platforms.
Once you have installed Calibre you can import any kind of an e-book file into it just by
dragging and dropping it, or you can do it from inside Calibre. To do that you simply
click on the big button with the label Add Books and navigate to where you have the books
stored on your computer, choose the right book and click open. Calibre will then create
a copy of the book in its own database and store it for you. Once Calibre is taking care
of your e-book files, you can then copy them into any e-reader device with just the click
of a button. After you’ve connected your device to the computer, a Device and a Send
to Device button will appear in Calibre. All you have to do then is simply to click on
the title you want to copy into your device and click Send to Device. You can then click
on the Device button to see if your book has actually copied to the device.
You can also tell that your book is successfully copied onto your e-reader or device by the
green check button next to the title in your library. Calibre supports the vast majority
of hardware e-readers out there including the most popular, Kindles and Nooks. It will
also copy files onto phones and tablets.
If you are using Calibre to store a lot of files, you may find it very useful to edit
the metadata properly. That means simply labelling them with their titles, their authors and
also using tags to categorise them. You do that simply by clicking on the title in Calibre,
click on Edit Metadata and then go fill in the information about the book. At the very
least you should edit the title and the author.
Another very useful feature of Calibre is that you can convert documents between all
the different formats for e-books, that can be pdf, e-pub or mobi. However, for Calibre
to be able to convert the document it has to be opened, meaning not protected by digital
rights management. For example, all e-books you buy from Amazon are protected and cannot
be converted by Calibre. However, many other publishers and many other online sources of
books provide e-books without digital rights management or DRM. This is also true for all
the books provided by Load2Learn.
Here is a bonus tip for how to make the most out of Calibre which is to subscribe to online
sources of information. All you have to do is click on the Fetch News button and then
choose which online newspapers you would like to have delivered to Calibre and how often
you would like to have them delivered, then all you have to do is choose when and how
they should be downloaded and simply if you keep Calibre running in the background you
will wake up in the morning to have the latest news that you can then copy onto your device.
Calibre offers many many other options that are worth exploring including the ability
to have your new files automatically sent to a device remotely if the device supports
it. There is also a connector for android phones that allows you to share the library
via the android phones.
To remind yourself of the basic functionality of Calibre, you can print out one of the Productivity
and Accessibility cue cards that you can download for free from the Load2Learn website.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for watching. For more tutorials or information about Load2Learn, please visit
load2learn.org.uk or contact us on 0300 3038313. Copyright 2012, Dyslexia Action and RNIB,
licensed under the Creative Common License by attribution for non-commercial purposes
and shared alike.