Dividing a catalog into ebooks and physical books

I would like to find some way to make a sharp divide between ebooks and physical books in my catalog. I can think of a number of ways to do this, but I’m not sure that LibraryThing supports any of them. For instance if I could create multiple catalogs, or catalogs containing sub catalogs or collections containing sub collections. Are such things possib?

It seems like Collections would work fine. You can put any book in multiple collections, but if an organizing principle of your catalog is to have every book in either the "ebook" or the "physical book" collection, that should give you the "sharp divide" you're looking for.

There are no "sub-collections" that would let you enforce a hierarchy with the ebook/physical distinction at the top, but you could still manage your own catalog that way, treating other collections as subordinate to the main divide.

I agree with >2 paradoxosalpha:.

I use a tag for ebooks. The others are all presumed to be hard copies. Maybe not as good a separation as mentioned above.

I too use a tag, but that ran into problems when I had the same edition in multiple formats. What I do now is to have ebook/print as a tag, but ensured that each entry had either one or the other.

This did involve adding copies to my library and making sure I had the correct media type associated with each copy. (This was fun with PD ebooks from Gutenberg or Faded Page.) I also had to ensure I had the correct ISBN - which can be a problem with Humble Bundle books - the ISBN that Calibre is picking up and displaying is often the print ISBN.

I use the tag method also and they can have multiple tags.
Examples:
own audio
own on computer
own on ereader app
own parts on computer *
own parts on paper *
own physical

* for when I have a story from a collection/anthology but not the whole book.

Good luck for finding the method that works best for you.

>1 BruceCohenPDX: divide by ebooks and print books using collections. I also record the media format of the book eg: pdf, epub etc.

>1 BruceCohenPDX: I use collections.
If you really want to have a complete separation, we do not have subcollections or subtags but you can create a set of collections and/or tags starting with ebook: for example and have these only for the ebooks. I do that for my radio play and other audio titles for example.

>1 BruceCohenPDX: There aren't any sub-collections, but I sharply divide ebooks and physical books in my catalogue by having two collections: ebooks and the regular "Your Library" collection. Everything goes in one or the other. This has the bonus of being able to see "all collections" at once, too. I also use tags ("ebooks"), but it's easy and simple to mark which collection the book goes in on the adbooks page using the quick edit.

You could also create two custom collections, "Ebooks" and "Paper books" and leave "Your Library" blank.