The Ultimate Book Library Setup For Obsidian

if you read a lot of books take notes on them and want a simple system to keep track of your books in obsidian this is the only video you will ever need by the end of this video you will be able to set up a book tracker that looks like this where you can easily view the books that you are reading books that you have not finished books you have completed and books that you want to read in the future if you are interested in creating a setup like this then do watch the video till the end because I don't want you to miss any of these steps now let me show you how you can create Book Tracker setup like this first we'll learn about autop populating book noes then we'll talk about setting of status for book noes in order to track them then we'll learn about using simple data view queries for tracking then we'll use the card CSS for this cards look and then we'll organize all of this in one place that will look like this by the end so let's start with autop populating all of these book notes have a property now you can manually add these properties as well but there's a better way that is by using the comy plugin called as book search go to the settings comy plugins go to browse and search for this plugin called as book search with over 70,000 downloads this plugin allows you to create book notes and insert book metadata from providers including Google Books and never go to options and here you have these options to create new file location new file name template file so let's start with with the file location I'll choose books for this the name of the new book note will be title if you want to make change it you can also do it uh by using this syntaxes then there is the option for template F if you are using uh some kind of template for booknotes then you can also specify it here uh I don't have any template in this VA so I'll leave it default if you want to see example template you can click on this and here you will have this example template which you can take it as an inspiration you can copy this and create create a new template in your VA from this text and it's always better to create your own template because if you don't create a template file then this plugin will add all the metadata that are available which might also be unnecessary so that might just clutter your uh properties so I'll create a template for books or template for book notes create a new note books and you can add a property type title will be title property author will be author you can always view the variables and what they mean in the plugin documentation if you go to the example template section there's a a link for template variables definition where you can learn more about these template variables let's add few more properties that will be helpful such as category pages I look for the variables for Pages I'll just write pages and use the variable total page which is over here let me add some more properties such as publish State and you will need to choose these property type as text because this cannot be added in the number format and add a status which will be unre or you can write to raade as well you can also add another property for rating the book like rating I already have the rating property in my book so it is displaying this autocomplete for now let's just start with this property one thing I forgot to add is the property for cob URL so I'll write cob you can write cob URL or cob I have been using cob URL in my notes show it's so in cob URL I'll just write Cobra URL so that it becomes easy to understand the data view where is in the latter part of the video and cover URL will be this variable cover URL we'll be using this cover URL to display in our library to display the book cover in our library these are the main variables that we will be using the new file location will be books new file name will be title template file is books it's inside the templates folder templates books service provider Google or you can choose n which is Korean one then there are these other options which I always let them be default if you want to save this cover images you can enable this option I don't want that now we have finished the first step that is adding properties to our note or autop populating our book notes let me create a new book now I'll go to command pet and seource for book Source you can also assign a hot keyy which I have assigned option b I'll just cck option b and here you have the book search mode now I can search for any book as side The Power of Now and it will display all of these books that are available from the Google library and you'll need to select the book that you want so this is the book by escar to The Power of Now 258 Pages the book note is created and this is automatically moved to the books folder let me sort this uh by recently created the Power of Now is here and there are no properties visable over here because I have disabled that option from the settings all the properties are visible on the sidebar now this book has the status to read once you finish reading the book you can write it as completed that's what I'm using if the book is unfinished and I did complete the book I use uh unfinished status and completed for the book that I read and reading for the book book that I'm reading right now and in grading I use the stars emoji you can add five stars five stars emoji in this rating property or you can add four stars or you can add three stars like that so that's all about status we have finished the Second Step that is adding status to our books whether we are reading the book or whether we have put the book into read lad list or whether we have already completed the book now we will use Simple data view queries for tracking books let me create a new note reading list tracker for this you will need to install the data view plugin and I hope you already have installed it so let's start the data view query we'll create a table format and we'll query notes from books tag all of the book notes in my personal VA are tagged with the book hashtag right now we do not have that hashtag in our template but you can also use the folder query such as table from you can use the book folder books and it will still render these files from this folder you can add the tag book to the book template for easier categorization of notes if I go to preview or reading mode it will list all of these files in table and it only has one column now let us create another column for the cover URL if you go to the book node that we created it has cob URL and it it has a link to the cover URL now we will embed this cob URL in our data view result let's start with parenthesis double code and we'll use the ined inside here and it will be linked to cover URL property from our note now if I go to preview it will render this cover URL and the title is this now we can change it table data view table the cover URL render adds cover now if I go to preview it will have the column will have a different name that is cover now add let us add few more columns such as Pages we can write Pages let me go to our book note and see I use total page for tracking the number of pages in my personal board and all of these notes I have moved from my personal vs to the patreon members VA so I'll be using that instead of the template that I created where I only had the pages property okay I'll need to change that total page as Pages if I go to preview you can see the total pages are visible now and you can add author as author I still need to see the property for author that is author so get back to to reading list tracker that I'm creating right now let's just finish with these four columns for this video we have a data VI query in a table format with these four columns cover a Pages author and the title and all of these notes have this book tag and if you go to preview it looks like this and this is not the setup that I showed you initially in the beginning of this video we have a cards view we can make that possible with the help of minimal themes card CSS right now I'm using the Border theme but if I go to appearance go to manage and install the Minal theme install and use it is still not showing the card view the way you show it is by adding a property CSS classes and card CSS now you can see the cards view of the data view query is visible but if you are not using manual theme and you prefer using other themes then there's also a work around that is by copying the CSS spp from Minal theme you can search for obsidian minimal theme and you'll have this gav repository for obsidian minimal theme go to this SRC folder then CSS then main. CSS and source for cards over here and you'll need to create a new CSS file for your Vault by copying this code from here if you don't want to do all of this work I will share this CSS spps along with the whole demo world that I'm creating with all the booknotes from my personal Vault you can get them on my patreon so I use the Border theme again if I don't add the card CSS then they will uh have the default look you can enable the CSS snippers by going to appearance go to car CSS and you can see all of the CSS that are available I'm using car CSS and tab tab call out you can click on this CSS nipit folder and it will open the CSS nipit you'll need to create a new file from here and add the code that you copied from the GitHub repository I already have the card CSS so I don't need to do that once you have added the CSS you'll need to enable it and add the card CSS in your note now this is what our reading list will look like but now it has a list of all the books in our world and we do not have a section to differentiate the books that we are reading books that we have read and books that we want to read we can make that possible with the help of data view query let's create a data view query for books that have completed status let me go back to our reading list tracker and here we can add more to the data view query create a data view table uh from book tag where contains status is complete Ed now if I go to preview it will only have a list of books that I have already completed similarly you can create other data view queries where the status is reading now if I go to preview this here is the data view query for the books that have already completed and this here is the DAT view query for books that I am reading right now now we have finished the third part that is making our book Library a little more beautiful with the help of this card CSS from minimal them now we will need to do one final step that is to bring all of these in one place if you go to the reading list node that I showed you in the beginning of this video it has all of these section where you can click on the section and it will display the books that you're reading currently if you click on unfinished it will uh show you unfinished books with the data view query completed and to read now let's learn how you can create this and for this you will need to use a custom CSS snippit this is all possible with the help of CSS the CSS snippit was shared by this user fireal good in Discord and I have made some customizations to this CSS to make it better if you want this CSS you can get it from the link in the description but if you want the customized one that looks like this you can get it from my patreon so you can just copy this code from G or you can download the CSS snippit from my patreon and you will need to add a CSS snippit to your bals snippit folder I already have it here tapped call out now let's learn how you can create a tapped call out with the ability to quickly toggle between these different data queries if you go back to Discord it will also have this markup you can copy this markup and I'll create a new note now reading Library and paste the mark up over here now if I go to preview it will look like this 1 2 3 now there are only three tabs right now you can add as many tabs as you want by copying this just add it over here and if I go to preview you will have these four columns you can rename the column the label of this column will be after this label here you can write for example currently reading now here you will need to write the data view query let me create one okay you'll need to write this double sign to make the data view query inside this tab so I'll write the data view query data view will be table I'll just paste the query for columns and from book W contains status is reading with capital r now if I go to preview the data view query is visible inside this tab I need to remove this three backticks at the end of this query if I go to preview now it has the currently reading tab has these nodes if you go to tab two it will display this tab three will display this now this is displaying this in the table format we can add CSS classes cards and it will look like this now let's rename this second column second column will be unfinished and you'll need to copy this uh data viu add it over here and where the status contain you can write unfinished I'll just copy this column in the third tab as well as fourth tab if I go to reading mode now you can click on these tabs and this will display different results now this three tab here we have not uh changed their names and the status also status is let's say to read and let's write the label as two read status let's WR completed for the fourth Tab and Status contains completed so I go to preview now the currently reading tab has these five books unfinished has these books to read will have these books completed we'll have this book so this is a really cool way to organize your book notes and keep track of the books that you are reading you can easily view the books that you're reading books that you want to read and books that you have already completed I'll be sharing this vault in my patreon so that you can get along with all the CSS nipp that are used in this Vault you will also be able to access uh these book notes from different books that I have completed so that's all for this video I hope you found a lot of value in this video if you want to support me for creating more content like this you can do so by my patreon thank you for watching have a great day see you in the next video bye-bye

Channel: Prakash Joshi Pax

Views: 1,917

Keywords: obsidian, obsidian notetaking, notetaking tips, obsidian dashboard, obsidian dashboard setup, Obsidian knowledge Management, second brain, Obsidian second brain

Id: F4cL2vHsDJA

Length: 17min 21sec (1041 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2024