How to best set up a small library?

Let me preface this with the knowledge that I am NOT a librarian, but hoping for pointers in setting up a good sized home library {3000+ books and growing}.

Does anyone have tips, ideas, etc for setting up a home library of around 3000+ books? They run to particular subject areas - home school textbooks for grades K-12, children's literature and picture books, and lots of adult religious texts from my college years.

I finally have enough space to set up and shelve all my books, but I'm at a loss for how to shelve them for easy finding. I am at a loss for what is the best way to sort and categorize on the shelf to make it easier on me.

And is there a good place online to buy assorted stickers such as are used on the ends of books to sort holidays, topics etc? I don't really know what they are called, but I do have a lot of books that already have them as I buy lots of used discards from my local library. Ideally I'd like someplace that sells ones with grades on them - K, 1st, 2nd, etc so I can use them to tag the books we use for each grade.

Hoping for help from someone who knows more than I do about the subject.

Since this is going to be your library in your home I'll suggest arranging them by what I call "psychological order" - that is to say, what makes sense to you, what you will remember when you go looking later.

There are a lot of library supply places on-line, but I'll not name names 'cause I'm not sure what the guidelines are here. But if you google "library supply" or even "office supply" you will find plenty to choose from. eek

I am going to take a chance and name the company I use to buy the clear polyester book covers.
http://www.shopbrodart.com/library-supplies-school-supplies/
They have always accepted my small orders with no problem. I hope I am not breaking any rules.

I agree organize by what makes sense to you. I organize my library by subjects that make sense to me such as my history books are grouped together by country, then by time period.

I third the suggestion to organize via "psychological order" (love that phrase). Think about the reasons why you might want to find or use something, and use those to guide you. For example if those were my books I'd probably group the textbooks by grade level, and keep the literature together in alphabetical order by author (my logic would be that I would only want the textbooks for a certain grade level, but I enjoy all reading levels of fiction). But if I only wanted to use the fiction in connection with certain textbooks, then it would make sense to shelve textbooks and fiction together by grade level. Looking at your profile, it looks like you've established some major subject groupings already - look at your most populated tags, and then think about how it would make sense to subdivide within those. Remember to think about where you might expand your collection, and if that might necessitate re-organization.

However, if you do want to use an established classification system, I have a few suggestions. The BISAC system is the system used by bookstores, and may be more simple to use. If you go here http://www.bisg.org/what-we-do-0-136-bisac-subject-headings-list-major-subjects-... you can see their list of major subject headings. Clicking on the subject heading gives you the subdivisions. The two problems I see with this are that it would be time consuming to look up every book, and it may not provide the specificity you need with your particular range of titles.

The other system to consider would be good old Dewey. The Dewey Decimal system is used predominantly by public and school libraries, and would probably be appropriate to your collection. LibraryThing can help with the classification, you can set up a style for Your Books which includes Dewey Number, and sort by that. You may still have to determine numbers for some books on your own. It would probably be very time consuming, however it sounds like you home school and it could also be a neat library literacy project for kids to help with. The OCLC runs Dewey and you can access a detailed explanation here: http://www.oclc.org/dewey/resources/summaries/default.htm

I also came across this pack from the British School Library Association which says it helps parents organize a school library and kids understand the system ($80 though!). Not sure if it would be helpful or not, but here's the link in case you want to take a look. http://www.sla.org.uk/primary-school-classification-scheme.php

The third possibility, if you have a local library school, is to find a MLIS student and pay them to do it. The student may even be willing to take on your project for the experience alone :)

@2

I'm pretty sure you're okay as long as you're not advertising.

I really like Demco's holiday/genre/etc. stickers, except their YA one is really plain. (And looks too similar to their large print one.)

Gaylord is here in Syracuse so I have to put in a plug for them.

I am a librarian so having worked with Dewey my entire professional life make it an easy decision for me at home. However, it really doesn't matter what you choose -- with library thing you can arrange by Dewey or any other format and still be able to find things if you follow what you input in this catalog. If you number your titles 1, 2, 3 etc. and put them in that order you will find them. Tags help as well.

Okay, So names are okay. For supplies we (my library - which was daring enough to let a guy do the shopping - and I) use Demco, Gaylord and the Library Store, but I also find stuff, like the polyester covers mentioned above, by doing google searches.

If you want to try and organize by Dewey, the Dewey number can be found on the copyright page of some books. To find titles that don't have a Dewey number, I try my local library catalog to see if the title is there or Library of Congress. Go to http://catalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First and try to find your book or one that sounds similar. Click on Full Record to get the Dewey number.

I use the Library of Congress cataloging system for my 2000 books. The only time you'll ever run into issues with that (IMO) is when you're working with the PZ7's (juvenile books).