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Organizing your books

sparkchaser

sparkchaser

Administrator and Stuntman
Staff member
In the somewhat near future I am going to be undertaking the somewhat daunting task of organizing my books into some semblance of an orderly classification scheme.

Currently my books are somewhat arranged into fiction and non-fiction. Fiction is organized more or less by Author but books get rearranged depending on shelf height vs book height. Non-fiction is loosely based by subject but the more often reached for books tend to be in the middle shelves and, as in my fiction shelves, books get moved around depending on shelf height vs book height.

Hopefully when I get my new bookcases, shelf size will not be an issue.

I was considering using the Library or Congress classification scheme but damn is it complicated. Dewey decimal looks a lot friendlier.

Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
I prefer to have my books simply arranged in "read" and "non-read." That's about it. I like having books that are in a series together, but that's about it. The randomness is more enjoyable. It just keeps me on my toes.
 
I like to have books grouped together by author and series to begin. Next I will tend to have them sorted by genres. There's not much insistance on separating fiction and non-fiction. Except for one shelf I keep all historical or psychological texts, they're pretty jumbled up. I have half a shelf of Chinese and Japanese books of both fiction and non-fiction so for the moment it doesn't matter.

There's a cabinet blocking half the books of one case from being easily reached so I've tried to keep more unread books on the bookcase that I can easily get to.
 
I have 2 bookcases, one for fiction, one for nonifiction. Non-fic is grouped by subject. Fiction is by series grouped together, though I have just realised while writing this and looking at my bookcases that I also sort by preference, so all my faves are on the top shelf down to least preferred on the bottom. I literally have 'top shelf' books. Without looking I would have said it was just grouped series. wierd.
 
I'm simple. I organize all of mine alphebetically by the author's last name. The few exceptions to this are the art books I have which are all grouped together and organized alphebetically by title.
 
Currently, they are all organized by height, simply because the shelves don't move. however, I do have all books by the same author together, philosophy, which are all smaller books, laying in a pile, and cook books are across the top, where they are most accessible.
 
:p I just have an unread pile....lol...this is because I found a website that you can sell your used books, cash4books.net. This has helped with the clutter that I once had. I still have some books that I can't part ways with but usually when I'm done I sell them.
 
I don't have a bookshelf yet and going to get one once I finally move. Mines are just on my desk, ordered by height (tallest goes first). The rest are on a pile (favorites on top!).
 
My fiction books are arranged by author and nonfiction is arranged by author within subject. It's pretty much the same system you'd find at Barnes and Noble.

Well, actually, honestly we're reorganizing the office right now so mostly they're on the floor :p But when they were on shelves, they were arranged by subject.
 
I organize mine into non-fiction and fiction. The non-fiction are then grouped by subject and shelved alphabetically by subject, and then sub-organized by author's last name. My hardback books are shelved according to author's last name. My fiction books are separated into genres, then alphabetized by author's last name. I then have little Post-It flags marking all the books that I haven't yet read.

My husband makes fun of my shelving system :p
 
I love the idea of using post-its. I just finished rearranging my library and now the fiction is arranged around the date of publication and then by author. It's a bit different, but I like it.
 
At the moment, they are all higgeldy-piggeldy, wherever I have the space. Generally though, I sort by size, and then author. On another forum, someone said they organise their books by colour; I like that idea - I think it would look great! Must be hard to find what you are looking for though, as there's no real order.
 
The color idea isn't a bad one for books that have been read and are not not likely to be reread in the foreseeable future. Otherwise, I agree that it would be difficult to find the book for which you're searching unless you can recall the color of its cover.

I have a photographic memory, so this would be fairly easy for me. Hmmm. I think I might have a project to do this weekend.
 
I guess it is. Just went to the link (singular, obviously) and now I know that this problem is a very big and annoying one. They should've organized them before it got like this. But who would know this would happen?
 
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