How do you organize your books?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I spent the day unpacking about 20 boxes of books and putting them up on new shelves in our recently finished basement. I have my own system and techniques for arranging my books, and I’m interested in hearing about yours. I also have a few questions.

I sort the books into several general categories, and order them alphabetically by author within those groups. The books I unpacked today were in the following categories: Fiction (the largest category by far), Biography, Drama, Education (my wife has been a teacher and school administrator for 35+ years), Feminism, Film/TV/Photography, History, Language, Poetry, Philosophy, Science, and Oversized.

Except for the oversized (far right, on the bottom), the groups are ordered on the shelves, left to right, as I have listed them here: Fiction, then the other categories in alphabetical order.

Still left to unpack are Humor (the second-largest group after Fiction), Children’s, and Transportation, totalling about ten boxes, and about another ten boxes of DVDs and CDs. (The home theater system is in one half of the main room of the basement, the library is the other half.) There may not be room in the basement for all the books, so the Humor collection may be relegated to one of the guest rooms upstairs, and the Children’s books may go to the other.

Here are the questions I have for my fellow Dopers:

  1. What are your categories, and how do you organize them on your shelves, and order the books within the categories?

  2. In the case of multiple books by the same author, how do you order them (if at all)? I have large numbers of books by Isaac Asimov, Lawrence Block, Robert Heinlein, Stanislaw Lem, Terry Pratchett, and a few others. I didn’t take the time today to order them, and may never, but I’m interested in your practice. Alphabetical by title would certainly be easiest, although chronological order seems more “logical,” but would be very time consuming. (If you do this, do you write the date somewhere on the outside, to make it easier?)

  3. How do you place them physically on the shelf? I place mine with the spines neatly flush with the front edge of the shelf, but I know some people who push them back so that there is room in front of them to put other things. (I dislike this approach: it offends my sense of neatness and order.)

  4. Anything else you want to tell us about how you’ve organized your library? Do you have a catalog? I haven’t looked, but I’m sure there must be apps for that. I put all of my movies in a spreadsheet many years ago, but haven’t kept up with new additions for a few years (although I haven’t added that many movies recently). I’ve considered using a database app for my movie collection, but haven’t invested the time yet. Cataloging my books would be an even greater time sink. The idea is tempting, though.

2

Good question! I like to arrange my books on shelves pretty much randomly. I do try to keep books by one author together, but other than that, randomness prevails. I realize that this approach makes it harder to find something that I am looking for, but it does promote serendipitous re-discovery of books that I might have forgotten about.

And, to your chagrin no doubt, I always push the books all the way to the back of the shelf, so that I can put other crap (coins, tie-tacks, pretty rocks, candles, etc.) in front of them.

Great question! I’m looking forward to other answers.

3

My system is similar to yours. Grouped first by category, then by author. Inside of author, I don’t worry to much, except to try to group books from the same series together.

As far as placement of the categories themselves, I actually have books spread across several rooms. Travel and history is in a guest room, as there are lots of books in those categories that are easy to pick up and read a short section in. The rest are in the den, with Sci Fi/Fantasy taking up one wall, and everthing else on a second wall.

In the “other stuff’ category, I’m thinking about picking up 3 stamps. The first would read something like 'Feel free to take it home, no need to bring it back”. The second would be “Yes, you can borrow this, but please bring it back to ToC when you get done”, and the third would be “Please don’t take out of the house, unless I give permission”. I estimate about 65% of my books would fit the first group (I enjoyed reading them, but I wouldn’t miss them if they weren’t here any more). Group 2 would be about 30% (I foresee myself rereading it, so I’d prefer to have it back) and about 5% into group 3 (mostly out of print books that I really like with a smattering of books I have some kind of attachment to).

4

Almost all my books are sf (the ones that aren’t go on random shelves) so I don’t have a category issue. Regular paperbacks get sorted this way:
First, novels and short story collections by a single author, in alphabetical order by author. Exception - book series with multiple authors go by the series name, example, Perry Rhodan. Exception to the exception is that the official Tarzan novel written by Fritz Leiber goes with the other ones under ERB.
Then I do Ace Doubles, by publisher number. Then anthologies, split into anthology series and then single ones. Then there are the books about science fiction, and then related science books.
Hardcovers and trade paperbacks are placed separately in a similar order.

For a while I sorted books by publisher and number (before ISBN) which was fun since the books were in date order by publisher, and you could see the evolution of the artwork on the spine and cover. One small problem - it was almost impossible to find anything, so I gave up and resorted as described above. A friend of mine did his collection by publisher, which was my inspiration.
Magazines are done by title and date, with large magazines, like pulps, going in holders on top of the Ikea bookcases.

5

Aside from oversized ones, books by the same author go together. Authors are grouped by the predominant category they fit in (which is like half sci-fi anyway). Past that, I sort by size. Books get pushed back all the way.

6

Hmph. You’re assuming my books are organized. :stuck_out_tongue:

Ok, they are a little bit organized. I have one bookshelf of favorites. I like books in a lot of different categories, so my favorites include things like Frankenstein, all of my Sherlock Holmes books, all of the Straight Dope books, a bunch of Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes books, Flowers for Algernon, Catch 22, I Robot, Dorian Gray, the Game of Thrones books, a bunch of Civil War books, a bunch of Piers Anthony books, so, yeah, basically a bunch of unrelated books that I just happen to like.

I have another bookshelf that is basically all Stephen King and other (mostly hardback) horror books, another bookshelf that is mostly classics, and a couple of bookshelves of technical books.

From there, the books are basically organized by when I got them, but if I come across a Dave Barry book that I didn’t have, or a classic book that I didn’t have, I’ll squeeze those next to the others. Mostly though, it’s first come, first serve. I have a bookshelf with books that I have had since I was a teenager. It has all of the Tolkien books plus a lot of sci-fi books. After that, anything goes. I’m a bit of a book addict, so I keep building new bookshelves, and by the time I get one built, I usually have enough books laying around in piles to fill it. At this point, I’m running out of places to put new bookshelves, and I have two large piles of unsorted books that I need to do something with.

I push books all the way to the back of the shelves so that I can put little items in front of them, like puzzles, a rubik’s cube, little robots, figurines, etc.

As cluttered and disorganized as it seems to be, I know roughly where most of the books are. Once in a while though I’ll be like “I know I have that book somewhere” and then I spend the next half an hour trying to actually find it.

As far as placement goes, my favorites are in my small office where my computers are in the basement, and another couple of shelves are up in my wife’s office upstairs, which are mostly classics or books that we have both had since we were young. The room in the basement with the pool table has a wall of bookshelves on one end (one bookshelf of technical books then a bunch of misc mostly newer books) plus a few other bookshelves on another wall, which is where the books I have had the longest are located. There’s a bookshelf in the basement hallway, with box of books in in front of it (blocking the lower half) with another box worth of books stacked loosely on top of it, and there’s another huge pile of books in the pool table room sitting on an old unused file cabinet. All of these loose books are my most recent acquisitions.

7

Yeah, organization is not my strong suit. But I am neat about it. I’m kinda OCD about sizes of books. It must look the same or in descending height. My art books (my prized ones) are always lain flat, stacked by size. Largest to smallest. I know it doesn’t make sense. I am a slave to my eye and how it looks overall. I do pull everything flush with front edge. That’s mostly to keep the cats from walking the book shelves. I let them have the top shelf for their library needs.

8

Like a library. By genre, then by author name, by series in chronological order, sometimes separated out by size if they are too large to fit.

9

I try to have mine in general categories with a progression of thematic content where there are multiple books on a particular subject within that category. The exact order of the categories varies from time to time in order to make sure the taller books fit onto the taller shelves while still keeping everything in the right category.

For example, on one bookcase (well, technically it’s a hutch but the shelves are filled with books instead of china and silverware) I begin with Folklore & Mythology, followed by Religion (the second largest category). The last of the Religion books end on the bottom part of the hutch where the shelves are huge as some of those books are too tall for the regular shelves. While I’m still on the larger shelves of the hutch, we move into the larger size books in the History section (the largest section), which happen to be on the history of books (such as a copy of The Voynich Manuscript and The Codex Seraphinianus, both of which are quite tall). These segue into the books on the history of magic and grimoires (some of which are also a tad bit too tall for the next bookcase). On the shelf just above these I managed to squeeze in General History and Historiography, which is how I usually like to start the History section. So it still kinda works whether you go left to right across the bottom of the hutch or top to bottom on the right side.

The next bookcase continues the thematic progression from the end of the hutch with books on the history of witchcraft and heresy, the medieval persecution of the Jews, the history of monsters, then eventually normal categories such as general medieval history and American history. I usually try to put the Philosophy section next to the Religion section but space on the hutch currently requires me to put Philosophy after History.

On another bookcase, all the Literature and Fiction books are followed by Languages. And another bookcase starts with Science, before moving into The X-Files (the transition book between these categories is The Real Science Behind The X-Files). Then we move on to Psychology (Mulder studied it at Oxford), Travel and Miscellaneous books on various random subjects that don’t have enough companions to justify a whole category to themselves.

In a previous arrangement in my old apartment, I had the books grouped in three main sections:

  1. Literature and Languages
  2. Folklore & Mythology, Religion and Philosophy
  3. History and Science
    So the whole library was basically themed as a progression of human knowledge from The Birth of Language and Stories to Ideas About How We Got Here and What It’s All About to How We Figured Out What Actually Happened.
10

I once read an interview with Art Garfunkle, which dealt mostly with his musical career, but had one fascinating side comment about his library:
He keeps all his books in chronological order. (i.e when he read it).
He apparently can remember when he read a book, as much as he remembers the subject matter.

Wouldn’t work for me!
But then I’ve only got a few bookshelves, so I don’t need much organization.
(Two bookcases, 12 shelves or so.
“Sorted” by general subject–a book on science, history, etc, is usually sort of near another one in the same category. Unless it isn’t. :slight_smile: Then, I just scan the other shelves for a minute.)

11

I feel I should maybe add a qualifier to mine lest anyone wonder why in hell I choose to follow books on medieval Jews with books about monsters. It does sound a bit anti-Semitic when I put it like that. :smack: In case my train of thought isn’t clear, the reasoning is that what the medieval persecution of witches, heretics and Jews all have in common is the demonization of the Other by the dominant groups in society, which is exactly the core of monstrosity as a concept.

So the whole thread of my thinking goes: need to fit the books about books here – grimoires are books of magic – magic = witchcraft – witchcraft is a form of heresy according to certain scholars on the topic – Jews can’t technically be heretics because they’re not Christians anyway but kind of next door to heresy thematically – the earlier demonization of these groups basically led to our modern idea of monsters. Therefore, that’s the order those sections run in. :slight_smile:

12

I know that’s around here somewhere. paws through shelves, looks under bed, clears off trunk, digs under couch cushions

13

History comprises most of my books and they are arranged in chronological order. If a book covers a broad subject, say the generic Medieval period, it will go at the beginning of the Medieval stuff - right after late antiquity. Biographies are put in also - James Garfield, Friedrich Engels, and Disraeli are in with Reconstruction, the Franco-Prussian War, and late nineteenth century colonialism.

The fiction section starts with anthologies(I’m a short story fan) but the rest is shelved alphabetically by author, and this includes anthologies of works by a single author, so The Roald Dahl Omnibus is under “D”. I don’t care about genre - if it’s a good story it doesn’t matter if it’s set on Mars or in a Dickensian garret. A sci-fi story can be a mystery and a political thriller and a horror story all at once.

Books on science, gardening, fishing, Chilton/Haynes manuals for every vehicle I’ve ever owned, dictionaries, etc. are grouped by subject. All over-sized books are lumped together on the shelf that they fit in.

14

Generally by subject matter. Language books have about a shelf and a half; there’s a bookcase with nothing but Alaskana (fiction and non); Africa; Art books; lots of cookbooks, of course; political stuff; general fiction; history. Probably others, but it’s too early to think.

15

90% of my keepers are histories and I don’t organize them; just shelve them after I read them. Ones I use a lot for reference are in the case closest to my desk, ones I don’t use as much are across the room along with my “to be read” piles. Ones I don’t turn to very often but still love are either in the small sewing room in a case there or down in the livingroom. The exception is my fly-fishing and tying books; those are all in a group at my work-table area.

I read a lot of sci-fi and histories that are not related to my primary interests but those I tend to box and hand off to others pretty quick

16

Most of my library is electronic now. So I can search multiple ways.

17

As with most other things in my life, I use the “Landitstay” filing system for my books - when I am done I toss it aside an where it lands, it stays.

It works for me, anyway.

18

My books are shelved in fairly random fashion with a few exceptions.

I have an entire bookshelf devoted to plant/gardening books, with sub-section organization (books on trees, tropical/subtropical gardening, individual genera, garden diary-type books etc.).

Another bookshelf has detective fiction, sorted by author.

Elsewhere there’s one shelf for pre-WWI, WWI and WWII books.

We have two separate bookcases for true crime, mine and Mrs. J.'s.

19

Most of my books are nonfiction (history and folklore), so I order my books by subject matter. Each bookcase has its own area of inquiry, more or less, and they tend to have their own sorting systems. There is a case for fiction, sorted alphabetically by author. There are cases for folklore, General World/Western European History, Eastern European History, and so on; these are all grouped chronologically within region, with general surveys coming first. Sometimes this makes for strange bedfellows. My US history shelf is kind of a hodgepodge right now, and one of my cases is a conglomerate of Music, Film, and Sports. I have one case that is just for sets: the Durants’ Story of Civilization, my 1885-1888 set of Burton’s Arabian Nights, some journal runs, and so forth.

Most of my research is on vampire folklore (though I’ve been bleeding over into literature and film lately), so vampires have their own case. I organize that one like Cumberbatch’s Sherlock organizes his books: by rigor. The shelf at eye level has most of my go-to books, mostly from academic presses. As a rule, the further a book gets from that shelf, the less regard I have for it. Right now, on a lark, I have that shelf sorted by athletic conference of the publisher: Ivy League, Big Ten, Pac 12, and so forth. For a while, any book that cited my work made it to that shelf, but I’ve had to sacrifice vanity for utility.

The key to all this is to keep books on things I might be writing about together. If I need to grab my books on Hmong culture, they’re all together. If I need my books on Jewish folklore, they’re all together. If I want my books on Nebraska history, they’re all together. It’s eccentric as hell, but it works, more or less.

20

This follows my concept pretty closely also. My Native American history books are all together, as are my African American history books. It sounds racist as hell, but if I’m going to write a piece on the lynching of William Brown in 1919, most of the material on lynching is going to be in one place and most of the material on Omaha is going to be in one place. Likewise, my Native American and Great Plains folklore books are next to each other; the Great Plains folklore books have a lot of Native American content, so it’s easy to find like material.