As my library has now reached over 200 books and two bookshelves, I am in desperate need of a way to organize my books. How do you guys organize your books? By author, genre or some other method?

Fiction all goes together, alphabetical by author's last name.

Plays all go together, and so do poetry, in a general chronological/geographical order.

Comics, graphic novels, and the like are together, even though they run through fiction and non-fiction.

Biographies, memoirs, and autobiographies are all together, alphabetical by subject.

Non-fiction is by subject. I try to get related subjects next to each other, so things seem to run together. Like, I'll have religion in one spot, and at the end will be things about Islam, and then after religion will be things about countries or regions of the world, and I'll start it with Middle Eastern stuff, so Islam kind of runs into Middles Eastern history, thus keeping like things together even though I've categorized then as having different topics.

Then there's a special shelf for particularly valuable or fragile books, so that they are out of harm's way among the general clutter.

i just started a new organizing experiment. i'm beta testing collections, which has been giving me all these new organizing ideas. the one i'm working on now is by cultural zones. rather than have everything separated into fiction and non-fiction, those are now together. basically my shelves look like this:

section 1: n america
section 2: latin america
section 3: europe
section 4: mid east (including n africa and parts of central and south asia)
section 5: africa
section 6: oceania
section 7: asia

and each section breaks down into:
fiction- which is broken down into classics (pre-1900), modern classics, general fiction, kid lit
religion
anthropology
travel
art

so now, for example, when i've just seen a really great movie from Egypt and want to continue thinking about things along those lines, all my books influenced by Arab culture are in the mid east section and i can pick on fairly easily.

this does present some problems i haven't figure out how to deal with yet, such as minority groups. how to file Brick Lane by Monica Ali, which is about Bangladeshi Muslims in England, is still going to take some figuring.

I have three bookshelves. I rank the bookshelves as 1, 2, 3. My favorite books go on the bookshelf, average to well-liked on the second, and decidedly meh books go on the third.

Within the shelves themselves, I keep series together, but other than that it's just based on what will fit where.

Perhaps that's pathetic for a librarian, but it works for me.

atlargeintheworld --> I think for your area method that I would put a fiction work such as Brick Lane in the area the story takes place in. I would argue that Brick Lane is a book about cultural issues in England, more so than about the middle east. Just my two cents ;-)

>5 gaialover

no, i agree with you. i think it's decidedly about issues in England. the problem i'm having is that since i'm setting this up this way, it's going to be easier to forget about a book like that when i think "i'd like to read a book about Muslim women" and that leads me to the Mid East section, just because that's what comes to mind.

plus, if for some reason i decided Brick Lane didn't belong in the European section, i'd stick in in the Asian section before the Mid East.

Alphabetical by author for the most part. All of the large, illustrated books go together simply because they only fit on one shelf and I'll bend the rules from time to time -- a Byron biography going next to the collected works, for example. Given that my library size is fairly small -- 288 books at the moment -- it's an acceptable system. If it keeps growing I'll have to reconsider grouping them more specifically.

I organize my library by genre (the first tag is the main one to determine the book's category) and then alphabetically by author's last name. My library is just under 2,000 volumes so I really do have to follow my rules if I'm ever going to find things! :-)

You are all so organised! Basically in the garage I have books read and some of my teaching books. In the living room I have all my To read books. In the bedroom I have the rest of my teaching books and some non-fiction books. But basically everything is all piled together on the shelves- fiction and non-fiction in no particular order.

atlargeintheworld...
if you're ever in London, you'd love Daunt Books – where the books are organised by area of the world, not genre. It's a fantastic place to do some armchair traveling.

>10 monarchi

wow! that places sounds wonderful. i'll have to add it to the list. thanks!

since most of my traveling has been of the armchair variety up until now, i keep a travel bible- a couple of big binders- with all the articles and other interesting bits about places i want to visit. i always try to have something on bookstores.

mine is acase of what fits where, I still live at home and share aroom with my sister we each have 1 shelf for our books(it is a very large shelf mind you) so its a case of what fits where, on the shelf re graphic novals and all my faviorite book and with books waiting to be read, 2 boxes under the self contain larger books and autobiographies, box on top of the waldrobe contins books that I've not read for awhile and some of my childhood books. and about 3 boxes up in the atic. the book are in no order.

this is going to sound awful, but I actually have a large bookshelf that runs along one entire wall of my bedroom (all the way up to the ceiling), the books are actually organized by color. It looks really cool from a decorating standpoint, but I also have a strange ability to picture the cover and spine if every book I own, and most books I've ever read, so it works for me.

To be honest, I'm surprised by the different methods! I would have never thought of organizing my books by the color of the spine or by where they are set. Awesome stuff!

I have all my mass market (fiction) pockets on my top shelf, merely for space. There they are alphabetically by author, no genre distinction.
Then I have all sorted by genre, I have travel (then sorted by series/author), then museology (sorted by sub-genre, and catalogues by country/museum), language, medieval history (general, specific issue), medieval texts, other history (chronologically by area), fiction (by author, all languages mingled), biography/non-fiction, classics (pre-1900 mostly), music, nature, children's books, crafts, photography, porcelain... I think that's it. Oh, and heavy and large books are on the ground, and cookbooks in the kitchen.

#13 - Actually, organizing by color makes perfect sense to me. I do that with my CDs - have them all in one of those big binder things. People make fun of it, but then they want to listen to something and I say "Oh, orange," or "Second page of silver," and they stop laughing. It's a great system.

Although maybe it's a LITTLE strange that I know all my CDs - there are hundreds - by color...

Nearly everything I own is alphabetical by author. I have shelves nailed into the wall above my desk, and I use various box sets and hardcovers as bookends. The A authors start up there, and it goes in order through three of the other bookcases I have in the living room. One bookcase is devoted entirely to my French literature, also alphabetical by author. I keep "spiritual" books together (Bibles, Tarot books, etc.), non-fiction together (mostly memoirs, some women's studies), plays and poetry together, cheesy romances all together, and kid's picture books together. None of that is any particular order, mostly by size, really. And a lot of that is stuck in the bedroom (2 bookcases there). For mass markets, I had to stack a lot of things horizontally for space. And I still have tons of piles unsorted around my apartment! I can't wait until we move so I can buy some more shelves. :)

Alphabetical by author, and chronological order within each author. It works fine because my "library" is comparatively tiny. The only exception is that cookery books (inc. cocktail recipes and a book full of pictures of ice cream portions) are in the kichen cupboard.

I have thought about organising my books by colour, publisher (lots of similarly formatted books together might look nice too) and size. If I was to organise them by size, it might be easier to keep other things on top of the books, and it might create the false impression of having more space.

I always find it strange when people separate fiction and plays.

#18

I forgot about cookbooks, haha. Mine are in the kitchen, too.

Plays are really only separate from fiction in my library because I have so few of them, and it's basically all Shakespeare. Made sense to keep it with the poetry.

After re-reading The House of Paper, I came across an interesting method of organizing a library.

"...he told me how hard it was to avoid putting two authors who had quarreled on the same shelf. For example, it was unthinkable to put a book by Borges next to one by Garcia Lorca, whom the Argentine author once described as a 'professional Andalusian.' And given the dreadful accusations of plagiarism between the two of them, he could not put something by Shakespeare next to a work by Marlowe, even though this meant not respecting the volume numbers of the sets in his collections...Brauer continued to insist books should be grouped together according to criteria other than a vulgar thematic one." (pg. 50-51)

Any thoughts?

LOL, why is thematic automatically "vulgar"? If you ask me, Shakespeare and Marlowe ought to be next to each other, if only to acknowledge any — um — sharing that went on ;). No matter who wrote it, it's together.

I think I said I would post pictures of the built-in bookshelves of our new house. Let's see if I can make this work:

(Well, you have to click on them, but that's nicer than if they stretched the screen while loading)

Classics:
IMGhttp://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa133/wisewoman83/Timcotopia%20House%20Construction/March2009023.jpg/IMG

Children's/YA Fiction:
IMGhttp://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa133/wisewoman83/Timcotopia%20House%20Construction/March2009014.jpg/IMG

Biographies, some theology:
IMGhttp://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa133/wisewoman83/Timcotopia%20House%20Construction/March2009012.jpg/IMG

Fantasy:
IMGhttp://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa133/wisewoman83/Timcotopia%20House%20Construction/March2009009.jpg/IMG

Sadly, my general fiction and mysteries didn't fit anywhere, so they are double-stacked behind the Children's/YA Fiction. I cannot believe I am already out of room...

Message edited by its author, Jun 30, 2009, 3:46pm.

I just use the Dewey Decimal System... I'm lazy and I like people being able to find my books on their own without my help... I don't befriend or associate with people who do not know the Dewey Decimal System, lol.

>2 I do similar to you:

Fiction together, alphabetical by author's last name.
As I have so few plays / poetry I have them grouped with fiction.
Biographies, autobiographies, memoirs together, alphabetical by author's last name.
I just recently separated YA, alphabetical by author's last name.
Non-Fiction is sorted by subject, kind of. Some subjects alphabetical, some more so by what I liked more than others.

>15 I love that idea! By color would be really nice.