Organizing my Home Library

I would like to get tips on organizing my home library. I think the Dewey Decimal system is appealing but I'm open to other suggestions. Is it possible for Library Thing to sort my collection in order of Dewey Decimal classifications? I have about 800-1000 books (a rough estimate). And a practical question -- for those of you who label your books on the shelves -- what type of labels do you use? I would like to use non-permanent adhesive if that is possible. Thank you.

You can identify the Dewey Decimal classifications here: while editing your profile settings, go to display styles; one of the options is for setting a column under Dewey Decimal. As for organizing, what I opt to do personally is have my fiction organized alphabetically by author and my non-fiction by Dewey Decimal.

If you want to organize by Dewey Decimal you should add your books using libraries as your source not Amazon, since Amazon doesn't include DD in their data. I think you may need to be selective as to your libraries as well since they don't all use DD (such as the Library of Congress).

Of course LT will fill the DD field with green, computed, data if enough other people have imported the same work that has the DD field filled. Green data though isn't actually in your catalog though, so if you try to export it it won't be there.

I'm quite happy with DYMO LetraTag paper labels. They do come off if I want, but stick well by themselves. Yes, the machine costs, but I can read the printed labels easily.

I also write the information inside the front cover, as very occaisionally a label will come off when I am reading.

Thank you so much Phocion, jjwilson61, and MarthaJeanne for your excellent responses! I am going to enjoy this site -- your answers were very comprehensive. I appreciate your taking the time to respond to a newbie!

I used to be able to find all the Dewey numbers others were using in the details but now only one suggestion appears. Does anyone know why?

For practical reasons, I don't use Dewey, or anything like it. I do group my books roughly by category, but if you have enough books to make organization a serious issue, then actually size is an important consideration. Major collections like the Bodleian Library have systems of organization which use size as the first dividing category.

I once had a whole bookcase of books on one subject area arranged by colour of spine, red on the left, violet on the right. This works very well if you have a good memory for what individual books look like. But it breaks down if you marry someone who has lots of books you don't recognize.

>7 MyopicBookworm: arranged by colour of spine, red on the left, violet on the right.

You have to be careful with this approach. Like all classification systems, you will need to expand its range as your collection grows, but it can be somewhat hazardous to shelve books with spines in the microwave or U-V regions in your home. When you reach gamma rays, it may even become illegal to shelve them...

>3 jjwilson61: I think you may need to be selective as to your libraries as well since they don't all use DD (such as the Library of Congress).

The Library of Congress doesn't physically shelve its books using the Dewey Decimal System, but MARC records created by the Library of Congress often include a Dewey number as well as an LC number.

8: No need to expand the range, just the precision. :)

# 1...
You've got 34 books in your library cataloged here on LT. Approximately how many books do you have?

I've done the reorg-to-Dewey - about 1,400 books initially arranged by order-of-acquisition.
I parallel-catalog my books in a spreadsheet and have separate columns for each dimension and weight of each book. With that info, I was able to generate formulas and plot exactly which books would fit on which shelves before I moved a single one of them. The actual reorg of the books took the better part of 2 days, working by myself.

The end result was an entire major section of Dewey was in a single room. (a good thing)
Three or four major sections share a same room. (a neutral thing)
Books that seem related are in different rooms of our house. (annoys us like you wouldn't believe)

I am in the process of recataloging (now 2,000 books, more or less) using the same system that most bookstores use - something called BISAC. It's an exercise in folding your brain in ways that defy physics. For example, is a dictionary of foreign phrases (or my book of Pirate Words) a dictionary under Reference (REF008000), or is it a reference book under Language Arts (LAN014000), or does it fall under the Linguistics subsection of Language Arts called Historical & Comparative (LAN009010)? The great thing about it is that I get to choose which one makes sense to me. The down side is that I have to decide which one makes sense to me. I haven't read even half the ones I own, so it's not that I would be making knowledgeable about each book as I try to choose. I can always change it, though.

I have an abbreviated copy of my spreadsheet (set up for Dewey) that a few other members of LT have used (or tried to use). If you'd like to consider it, put a private message on my Profile Page and include an email address.

I have my bookkshelves set at a height that fits most of my books. The ones that don't fit are on the top shelf, or a narrowbookcase with tall spaces. That gives me two places a book could be if I only know the call number and can't remember its size, but it works well for me.

A for me intriguing idea is to some day sort books by year of first having been published, and then, within, the proposed splitting of fiction in alphabetical order and Dewey for the non fiction; also solving the height problem I do that vertical, so that the books of the category stay together. Another problem: lots of non-fiction are written in lovely prose or even sometimes in Rhyme (Livius, Pope ...) and some of facts turn out fiction. A difficult split.

Another Idea is to follow the somewhat quirky categorizing of the NYRB (New York Review of Books) Reader's Catalogue.

One can visit a big book shop or a library and copy that style.

Right now it's still a topsy-turvy world in my shelves ...

>14 Buchmerkur: Our "classic lit" section — all adult fiction first published before the 1930s and some up to the 60s — is organized first by year and then, if multiple volumes share a year, alphabetically — by title of the book. In practical terms, this means Homer gets to live next to Sophocles, instead of slumming it out with Hawthorne and Hemingway (who also aren't near each other).

Books which haven't been entered into the system and assigned a shiny new call number are organized by date of acquisition as >11 WholeHouseLibrary: mentions, but the thought of intentionally organizing books that way gives me the shivers... whew!

I have a lot of bones to pick with Dewey, and while nonfiction is tolerable in most respects and can be manipulated somewhat to adjust for some of my more major issues with its system, it would be like pulling teeth if I were forced to use it for fiction.

>15 GraceCollection: "... this means Homer gets to live next to Sophocles, instead of slumming it out with Hawthorne and Hemingway (who also aren't near each other)." -- quite! That's how I like it.*

-- and adding non-fiction according to the year of publishing gives an impression of the Zeitgeist.

* -- although, if I remember correctly, Michel Tournier once complained, that Hans Christian Andersen had been born before him and had stolen him some of his ideas ...

>17 Buchmerkur: "adding non-fiction according to the year of publishing gives an impression of the Zeitgeist."

I can definitely see where you're coming from here... I just would hate to have 2 non-fiction books on the same topic 100 books separated from each other because they were published 40 years apart! It is an intriguing notion, though. How does Origin of Species or Interpretation of Dreams affect those written 5 or 10 years later?

>18 GraceCollection: true. I guess one has to decide for which option one makes use of the online cataloguing.