Do you present your Folio books so that they are poll position in your library or are you content to let them rub shoulders with the scruffy penguin 1960s penguin classics that you got equal enjoyment from way back when you were younger and less affluent?

Are your books ordered by Dewey, Alphabetical, Publisher, To be Read, or some other system or have they arranged themselves through haphazardness or evolving tastes?

Are your 'special' or 'expensive' editions lock away in a secure area or are they part of the general library to be handled and browsed at will?

My library will be built (along with the new house) hopefully be the end of the year - it would be grand to be in and settled for the holidays.
Hopefully the funds will be there to kit the place out with bookcases around the walls with glass doors.

I hope to have a decent system worked out for my books by then so that I can get them in and organised quickly and efficiently.

I suppose some of you guys have orderly libraries and would like to know your thoughts on how you store / present your books and how your Folio Books fit into this system.

Half of my Folio books are in a small bookcase next to the couch in the living room where guests can see them. The other half are stacked on the floor of my bedroom because there is no more room for them in the designated bookcase. :) Because of the lack of room, I haven't been able to organize them properly, so they are mostly shelved by size to fit the most books in the small space available.

The rest of my books (the ones in bookcases, at least!) are shelved loosely by subject. It's organized enough that if I want a book on, for example, Yosemite, I know which shelves to go to, but there is still the joy of having to browse a little for the book I want.

If I had a "real" library, I would still keep the Folio books separate from the common crowd, simply because they look so lovely in their serried ranks :) Everything else would be by subject or genre, then by author.

In my living room, there are two large bookshelves where the Folios reside.
They pretty much stay together, with a couple of exceptions.

For instance, I have a lot of martial arts books and my sun tzu is with them (downstairs). I'm not consistent, because I left my Tolkiens upstairs with the majority of the Folios, instead of putting it downstairs with the sci fi/fantasy shelf.

Mine are organized by subject (to the degree that they're organized at all). But I keep all of an author's works together, even if they're on different subjects.

My Folio's do rub shoulders with anything and everything. They seem to like it!

Message edited by its author, Jul 11, 2009, 10:41pm.

My books -- the ones in shelves -- are strictly segregated between read and unread, even if this breaks ups sets that would look better together. Sets of multiple books in a single slipcase stay in the "unread" section until they've all been read. Seeing the "read" section grow, slowly but surely, encourages me. Within each group books are roughly organized by subject modified by size -- books of comparable height are shelved together even if this means mixing up subjects a bit. I just like this look and it makes for a more economical use of the precious shelf space.

Somehow this "system" works for me and I know where all shelved books are. (The ones in piles on the floor are another matter entirely, though these are always unread books -- a read book automatically earns a place on a shelf.)

As I buy (most) of them for their contents, I treat them as normal hardcover books.

Therefore they are among the others:
20th century Non-fiction grouped by subject in my office/study.
Pre-20th century non-fiction and all fiction by century, language, country, UK vs. US, author in the living room.
Author biographies and letters are with their works.

I have separate bookshelves for 20th century fiction paperbacks - double shelved and squeezed tight.

There is no need to keep my Folio Society books separate to impress visitors, most of them are left speechless when they see the floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

Most people ask: Have you read all of them? A: Used to be 90% but now that I have more money than time it's more like 60%.
Some people try to ignore them all evening, but keep glancing at them as if worried they might topple over and kill them.
The right kind of people go over and start touching them - They find the Folios quickly enough.

My Folios are spread around my collection, but because of their size tend to be on the middle shelves and generally separated between my read and unread bookcases. I do not mix with paperbacks much (my limited selection of biography/autobiography is mixed), as with Lloydville it makes for a more economical use of shelf space, but I do mix with other hardbacks

However, I tend to place all works by one author together, so my Trollope, Hardy and Kipling, even if some are unread, once I have a reasonable number by the same author, as they look good together.
(Edited for typo)

Message edited by its author, Jul 12, 2009, 4:02am.

Fiction is all shelved by author with the FS books mixed in. Non-fiction shelved by subject, again with FS books mixed in.

Message edited by its author, Jul 12, 2009, 1:37pm.

I organize mine by general categories that make sense to me (a pretty comprehensive list is below, in case it's helpful). I like to mix my FS, EP, and other fine volumes in with the rest. It makes the library look nicer overall. For the same reason, I remove dust-jackets/wrappers because I find the spines on hardcover books look nicer on the shelf that way. I don't buy mass market paperbacks - only nicer trade PBs (so the paper will last longer than I do).

On any shelf, I do try to match books of similar size because they support each other better and prevent board warping over time. So, in the Fiction section of authors starting with 'H', the only order is the size of the book. And I'm a big proponent of good, heavy bookends that are at least two-thirds the height of the book they are against (again, to prevent the boards from warping). And, I aligh the foredge of the books (as much as is practical) rather than the spines, again so they support each other and prevent warping.

My categories (in no particular order)
Fiction (by author)
History (by period - pre, Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and from there by century)
Biography/memoirs - (by period, as with History)
Cultural (things like The World of Odysseus or The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World; generally by period)
Travel writings (like In Search of England or A Time of Gifts)
Humour
Poetry (anthologies and single poet collections by poet)
How-to (from gardening to games to self-help)
Genealogy
Drama/Plays
Books and bookbinding
Fine Arts
Music (by genre)
References and language
Essays
Legends and Fables (by culture)
Science (incl. political science)
Philosophy/Theology
Bibles/commentaries/bible study
Short Stories (anthologies and then single author collections by author)
and, on the top shelf in the back corner of my office, books on subjects I'm not ready to talk with my kids about yet.

That about covers it. Works for me. I can usually find a book as quickly by going to the shelf where it should be than by loading the database and looking it up there, so I guess it's working well.

Os.

PS - there's a photo of about two-thirds of my library in the "About my library" section of my profile page. The rest are on three walls of my office, right around the corner.

Message edited by its author, Jul 12, 2009, 4:03pm.

> Nice :-)

i generally eschew organization of books, although my Folio volumes do stand together in a double bookcase. Browsing is much more fun sans organization.

First off - an apology: I am not a FS devotee (I have not one FS edition) but now that LT has added the Hot Topics! I find that you guys show up frequently and have fun and interesting things to say.

I would normally not intrude but the question in the OP struck a chord. Most of my books are shelved in "order" - fiction alpha by author, non-fic by LOC with a few sections pulled out for the "spouse's" shelf.

However, I have one bookshelf with glass front (it's in the living room not the library) and it houses the "old" books. I have a fondness for old editions of books. Not because they have any particular additional value - they are usually mass-produced hardcovers for libraries - but the thought of how many hands they have passed through. Seeing all this books that are 80+ years old (apparently my idea of "old" is a book that was published before my grandmother was born) in one place gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.

>12 - "First off - an apology: I am not a FS devotee (I have not one FS edition) . . ."

No apology required. The heart of this group, it seems to me, is just a love of books. Be careful, though -- if you hang out here long enough you'll soon find yourself in possession of more Folio Society books than you have space for, with a crowd of folks cheering you on as you contemplate buying more.

Having a glass-fronted bookcase is a very fine thing. If you keep leather-bound books in it, consider putting a small glass or saucer in it as well with a sponge kept perpetually damp -- this will help prevent the leather from drying out and cracking over time.

>13 - Thank you for your kind reply!

Having a glass-fronted bookcase is a very fine thing.

Isn't it 'tho? Tickles me pink...I acquired mine through the estate sale of a great-aunt - which adds to its allure for me.

Consider putting a small glass or saucer in it as well with a sponge kept perpetually damp

Curious... my mother keeps a mason jar of water in her piano for the same reason, to keep the tuning board from getting dried out.

Now I'm feeling nostalgic. When my parents moved house to Marske-by-the-Sea (I was 17) we inherited a large glass-fronted oak bookcase that stood on the landing outside the bedrooms (the previous owners said it was for me because they knew I loved books but it was probably too heavy for them to move). They also told me it had been salvaged from a shipwreck (without further details). It had two sliding doors on ball-bearings and two drawers at the top. My parents kept all their "heirloom" books in there, including a diary for 1947, the year I was born (it had a lock of my baby hair in it) and also a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover hidden away, wrapped in brown paper. After my mother died, my dad had this bookcase shipped out to me at great expense, with some of the books, and we lugged it around with us in three house removals. The varnish went all crackly so at one point I sanded it down, but it was always very cumbersome, and far too big for the place we live in now. Finally (after finding a dead mouse under it) I gave it to the Salvation Army. The men who came to pick it up seemed very pleased. I hadn't given it a thought for years but am now remembering the sound the doors made when they slid over the bearings, and the woody musty smell inside. Hope it's well restored, and in a good home.

Overthemoon...thanks for the memories. It's stories like these that keep me coming back to this forum.

>13 You may want to use distilled water long term depending on the mineral content of the water where you live. This technique is also good if you have old ivory objects stored. I've been told that over time water with a high mineral content can cause discoloration just by being closed up together.

>17

Oh, Pellegrino not good enough?

Big advantage with slipcases is that big books in slipcases act as their own bookends. So most of my Folios are on top of bookcases, rather than inside them...

>14
Welcome. Plunge in. We're a lively group and great proselytizers for Folio Society (and, sometimes, Easton Press, Franklin Library, Limited Editions Club, Heritage Club, Library of America, the Nobel Prize, the Booker Prize, and more- except when we're completely opposed to all of those things).

To the main question:
I have two bookshelves in my living room made by a local company where I keep my Folios, my LECs and my Heritage Press books (because they all have slipcases and look good together) on one shelf and a mix of Franklin Library, Easton Press, LOA, etc. on the other. Other books are in shelves in my office in basic categories: fiction, history, poetry, film/theatre, etc. I have a small Hawyood-Wakefield bookcase that holds small size editions (MacMillan Illustrated from the 1930s, Collector's Library, Everyman's Library, Modern Library, etc.) My two-year-old granddaughter commands her own small bookcase and can put her books wherever else she chooses around our house.