How Do You Organize Your Library?
By John DeNardo |
Monday, March 29th, 2010 at
11:29 am
How Do You Organize Your Library?
Are you the “throw ‘em anywhere” type, or are you the type of person to meticulously organize and sub-categorize books by genre/author/year? Or somewhere in between?
“How Do You Organize Your Library?” was the question John Ottinger posed in his latest Inside the Blogosphere feature.
Along with several other bloggers, I was asked to participate. Head on over there to see what we said.
Filed under: Books
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I organise mine by weight of books and strengh of shelves, they are then stacked back cover down double deep so I can get as many on my shelves as possible. They are kept by authors and thats about it, when I moved in to the flat I now live in it was to much effort and didn’t have enough time to do anything better and with a couple of thousand books I have gotten round to trying to sort authors alphabetically or by genre (not sure how doing by genre would work mind).
That said I can walk straight to every author and find whatever book I want.
I have half a dozen book cases (1 of which is cunningly placed on my front stairs as there was nowhere else to put it, apart from the back room) and a fair amount of shelving.
I have several areas that are in order – Joe Lansdale, Bill Crider, Neal Barrett, Jr., Hard Case Crime, Daniel Pinkwater. Beyond that serendipity is the word. Wherever I have space is where something goes. After selling the big lot 2 years ago, I put the science fiction hardcovers in order. thos ebooks have tended to stay put, but all new acquisitions are now wherever there is space. It means I look a lot for things, but in doing so, always find something else that screams “Read me NOW” as I look.
It was once suggested to me that I should organize my books by color.
No, I’m not kidding.
Pikers. (OK, not Scott.)
Behold my library, ye mortals, and despair!
For the first edition hardback fiction:
Plus:
(All the custom built bookcases are made of real wood, and all of the five highs and most of the 8-highs were stained and varnished by Howard Waldrop for me; I did the rest. Most of the generic 5-high bookcases are made out of crappy particle board.)
For the hardback non-fiction in my office on the second floor:
Somewhere in excess of 5,000 books for my own library, and another 2,000 or so volumes worth of stock.
@Lawrence: Sweet Jeebus! :O
i group books with the same author together and that is about it.
I’m pretty anal about it. In a perfect world, I would have all my books separated by fiction/non-fiction/reference, then by genre, then alpha by author. Within each author, I like to group each series in chronological order (if applicable.) Using this system, I know right where my books are and I have a better grasp on which books came out in which year.
Unfortunately, my wife is the “throw ‘em anywhere” type.
As a result, I have no idea where the hell my books are. I tried to find one over the weekend, without success.
Library of Congress when I organize at all.
Books that I want people to know that I read so that they’ll think about how smart and educated I am go on the middle (eye level) shelves of the large, prominent shelf in my living room.
Books that I’m ashamed to own (like Dan Brown novels) tend to get hidden in the bedroom.
If I organized my library I’d never find what I wasn’t looking for, which I thought was the point of such things.
I wrote up my thoughts here: http://jeditrilobite.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/organizing-libraries/