# The Library panel

> One side panel for the open book, the open shelf, the whole library and what has run. Most commands are buttons in it.

Select the **Library** ribbon icon, or run **Library: Open the Library panel**. It sits in the right sidebar and opens by itself the first time you open a book note (turn that off in **Settings → Library Hub → Notes → Library panel**; close it and it stays closed until you restart Obsidian). Three tabs run along the top, and the panel picks one for the note you have open: **Book** for a book note, **Shelf** for a shelf note, **Library** for anything else. A tab you pick by hand stays until you open a different kind of note.

## Book

![The Book tab: the open book, with the summary and the page for the site each showing what they are doing](img/panel-book.png)

- **Read** at the top, and the **More** menu (⋯) beside it: look up metadata, replace the cover, write chapter notes, add to up next, open with, open the highlights note. Every tab's ⋯ menu ends with **Report a problem…** (see [Troubleshooting](troubleshooting.md#reporting-a-problem)).
- **This book:** cover, authors, formats and providers, the reading status with a button for each of the others, and the shelves.
- **Summary and page:** **Summarize** and **Publish page** each show what they are doing: *Asking the model…* with the time so far and **Cancel**, *Ready to review*, *Written*, or *Failed* with the reason in words. A call Model Hub refuses (it could cost more than the limit for that task, say) fails here, with a button to the setting that fixes it, and nothing is written.
- **Your notes:** opens the book's summary note (made empty and unpublished if there is none) and its private reading notes. Your own text in the summary note is never edited by publishing.

A page waits for your say before anything is written:

![A page ready to review in the panel, with its text, the buy links kept and dropped, and the Write the page button](img/panel-publish-review.png)

## Shelf

![The Shelf tab: the open shelf's actions, Publish all books with one row per book, and how the shelves are doing](img/panel-shelf.png)

For the open shelf note: **Share this shelf**, **Add a book to this shelf**, **Keep as is**, **Summarize the books on this shelf** and **Grow this shelf**; and **Publish all books**, which asks for a page for each book that has none and shows one row per book. **Write all** appears when two or more are ready. Below, **Check shelves**, which finds pairs of shelves that look like the same shelf, and a line saying that checking shelves by what their books are about needs Topic Map.

## Library

![The Library tab: books being read, what needs you, the library at a glance, providers, and the actions](img/panel-library.png)

Reading now, your reading goal, the highlight of the day, **Needs you** (one row per kind of thing waiting, each with its count, opening where you deal with it: changes waiting for Calibre, Calibre conflicts or failures, metadata rows, author merges, shelf suggestions, differences from providers, shelf proposals, pairs of near-duplicate shelves, new books to shelve, and new books to bring in; something it can't read shows as a row that names the cause), the library at a glance, providers (also summed up under the tab's title), and **Activity**: jobs that are running or have run, with progress, time and cost, and **Cancel** while one runs, then the changes you can **Undo**. Last comes one fold per area (**Sync**, **Shelves**, **Reading**, **Review**, **Library**), each listing the commands that need no particular note. **Resync now** and **Undo a notes sync** sit at the top.

## The command palette

Obsidian's command palette lists eight commands:

| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Library: Open the Library panel** | Opens the panel. |
| **Sync: Resync now** | Brings notes, covers and the library Base up to date. |
| **Sync: Undo a notes sync** | Takes back a run. |
| **This book: Summarize (one page)** | Starts the summary job; the panel shows it. |
| **This book: Publish this book…** | Starts the publish job. |
| **This book: Read** | Opens the book in the reader. |
| **Shelves: Share this shelf…** | Writes the shared shelf. |
| **Shelves: Publish this shelf’s books…** | Starts a publish job for each book without a page. |

Every other command is a button in the panel and runs the same code. This guide names each by its area and its button, such as **Sync: Update author notes**: look for it in its area's fold on the Library tab, or on the Book or Shelf tab for one that works on the open note. Right-click a book note for the ones you use most. If you had set a hotkey on a command that moved, Library Hub lists it once, the first time it starts after the update.