Copies and moving books

When your library holds more than one copy of the same book, each copy has its own price, condition, shelf and photos, and can be lent out independently of the others. Open the book, expand its copies panel, and use that copy’s own "Edit copy 1", "Edit copy 2" and so on to work on them individually.

A copy is shown the same way whether your library holds one or a dozen, so nothing you learn about one case has to be relearned for the other. A book you hold one copy of shows that copy directly under Holdings — its shelf, its photos, and "Edit this copy". Once there are two or more, the same cards sit behind a "2 copies of this edition" toggle and are numbered — "Copy 1", "Copy 2" — so you can tell them apart; each still carries its own shelf dropdown and its own edit button. Changing one never changes another, and if someone else removed or transferred that copy while you had the page open, the change is refused and told to you rather than landing on a different copy.

Each of those dropdowns is also a good place to notice you need a location you have not made yet — two copies of the same book in two different homes, say. "Add a location…" at the end of the list makes it and files that copy there; see More than one home in Rooms and shelves for arranging several.

After an import or a reshuffle, re-homing books one at a time is the wrong tool. On the library page, Select turns every book into a checkbox — in the grid, the compact grid, and the list — and a bar at the bottom counts what you have ticked as books and as copies. Tick a few, or, with filters on, choose "Select all N matching" to take everything the current filters describe without paging through it. During a text search there is no select-all, because search results are a bounded list rather than a whole set; you can still tick them one by one.

The bar offers the copy-level changes: move to a location, add or remove one of your tags, set the condition, set one custom field, or remove from the library. Each applies once, to every selected copy, and reports back what it did — how many copies changed and how many were left alone. When a location filter is on, only the copies actually inside that location are touched, so selecting "everything on the Study shelf" and moving it never drags along a second copy that lives in the attic. When a custom-field filter is on, only the copies that match it are touched — for books you tick one by one as well as for "Select all N matching" — and the bar counts them as matching copies: if one of two copies is signed and you filter on Signed, moving the book moves only the signed copy. One action can change up to 1,000 copies; if a filter matches more, the bar asks you to narrow it.

Some things are not offered in bulk, on purpose. Read status is personal, not a copy attribute. Genre and author describe the shared book record, not your copy. Price is never the same across a shelf of different books. Removing asks you to confirm every time, and above ten copies to type the number; a copy that is out on loan is left in place and named in the report rather than removed from under the borrower.

A move to a location, a condition change and a removal can be taken back. The report for a move or condition change says how many copies changed and until when it can be undone, and carries an "Undo" button; the report for a removal says how many copies were removed, how many books have no copy left, and until when they can be restored, and carries a "Restore" button. The same action stays listed — with "Undo all" or "Restore all" — in Library activity for 30 days (see Library activity and undo). Undo puts every copy back to where it was — each to its own previous shelf or grade — and Restore brings every removed copy back; either way, if any one copy cannot be put back, nothing changes and the ones in the way are named. Adding or removing tags and setting custom-field values cannot be undone: for those the report is the record.

Selection mode is available to Admins and Members (anyone who can edit copies) and enforced on the server; a Guest never sees it. The phone app does not have it.

Filter My Library to one location — with the Location filter, or by scanning that shelf’s label — and a row headed "Shelf actions for" that location’s name appears under the toolbar, with four buttons: "Print shelf label", "Print book labels", "Move books…" and "Check this shelf". It says what each one covers. Book labels, moving books and checking the shelf take in that location and every location inside it — a bookcase includes its shelves, a room its bookcases — and the row says how many locations that is. The shelf label is that one location’s own label.

"Move books…" turns on Select for the list you are looking at, and nothing more: no book is ticked and nothing moves. Tick the books you want (or "Select all N matching"), choose the location in the bar at the bottom, and apply — exactly as in Moving many books at once, with the same report and Undo. The two label buttons open the same print pages as Library tools → Reports. "Check this shelf" starts a shelf check of that location, or reopens the check already covering it — see Checking a shelf below.

Shelf actions are for Admins and Members, on the website; Guests do not see them.