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Calibre

Calibre is a free and open-source software (FOSS) for reading and managing e-books. Calibre has cross platform support for Windows, Mac and Linux. It also supports a wide range of reader devices from mobile phone to Kindle. Calibre includes an e-book viewer and allows you to make annotations. It is compatible with dozens of file formats such as epub, mobi and pdf. Calibre also comes with a web server that allows you to read books in your calibre library on any phone/tablet device using a web browser. Usefully Calibre can convert between file formats and remove DRM which would otherwise prevent you reading certain file types on different devices. It can even turn your own personal documents to e-books, or be used to create new e-books from scratch.

Personal Experience

I primarily use Calibre to manage, read and annotate epub files which are not currently supported by Zotero. Zotero is still my reference manager but I use Calibre to export quotes and annotations which can then be imported into Obsidian as markdown files. I currently use Dropbox as a bridge to synchronize annotations between my different computers. This is not ideal because it requires manual upload and download of files to and from the local libraries held on each computer. Going forward I hope to establish a better approach.

Tools & Software Integrations

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Resources

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Notes and Troubleshooting

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