Book Metadata

Every book in Tsumihon has a rich set of metadata fields that power search, filtering, display, and automatic deduplication. This page describes each field and how metadata is used across the app.

Metadata Fields

Titles

Books support three title fields to accommodate multilingual naming conventions:

Japanese — the original Japanese title.
Romaji — the romanized (Latin alphabet) transliteration of the Japanese title.
English — the English translated title.

At least one title is required when adding a book. You do not need to fill in all three — any combination is valid as long as at least one field has a value.

People & Groups

Artists / Authors — the creators of the work. Multiple artists can be listed.
Circles / Publishers — the circle or publishing group associated with the work.

Classification

Tags — free-form tags describing the content, themes, or attributes of the book.
Categories — user-defined classifications, useful for organizing your library by type.
Parodies — source works that the book is based on or references.
Characters — characters featured in the book.
Languages — languages the book is available in.

Details

Page count — total number of pages.
Rating — your personal rating for the book.
Release date — the publication or release date.
Description — a text description or summary of the book.

Media

Cover image — the primary cover image displayed in the library grid and detail screen.
External URLs — links to the book on external sites. Duplicate URLs are automatically deduplicated.

Source IDs

Source IDs are extension-specific identifiers that link a book in your library to its entry on an external source. They are stored as a map of source name to ID:

{
  "source-a": "abc123",
  "source-b": "xyz789"
}

Each extension assigns its own source ID when you import a book. A single book can have source IDs from multiple sources if it has been found on more than one extension.

How Metadata Is Used

Searching & Filtering

All metadata fields are indexed for search. When you type in the library search bar, Tsumihon matches against titles, artists, circles, tags, parodies, characters, and more. You can also use the filter system to narrow your library by specific tags, categories, artists, or languages.

Auto-Merge Matching

When Auto-Merge is enabled, Tsumihon uses metadata to identify books that are the same work from different sources. The matching process considers:

Source IDs — if two entries share a source ID from the same extension, they are the same book.
Title similarity — titles are compared across all three fields (Japanese, Romaji, English) to find near-matches.
Artist and circle — used as secondary signals to confirm or refine matches.

Duplicate Detection

Source IDs are the primary mechanism for duplicate detection. When importing a book, Tsumihon checks whether any existing book in your library already has a matching source ID from the same extension. If a match is found, the import is flagged as a potential duplicate, and you can choose to merge the metadata or skip the import.

Tip: Keeping source IDs intact is important for accurate deduplication. If you manually create a book, it will not have source IDs unless you add them, which means it cannot be automatically matched with imported entries.

Cross-Referencing

Source IDs also enable cross-referencing between extensions. For example, if a book has source IDs from two different extensions, Tsumihon can link the two entries and pull metadata updates from either source. This is especially useful when one source has richer metadata (e.g., more tags) than another.