Show your work in the comments

[sabotabby]

[Poll #1809946]

Comments

[lovmelovmycats.livejournal.com]

Oops, I mean, subject matter and alphabetical by author.
And- spine color? Really? But I guess I should get it. When I went to military school we were made to arrange our books by height. Ugh!

[sabotabby]

Height would actually make sense. My main problems are art books and comics.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

The Dewey Decimal system is, by and large, a system of subject matter, but enables us to find a particular book on a particular shelf.

Subject matter is the easiest and most effective way of arranging books, movies, music because you have a general idea of what to look for and you can discover new things while browsing. The alphabet is seriously overrated.

[sabotabby]

The last time I tried to arrange books by general subject matter (rather than specifically DDS) I ran into some trouble. It's the same kind of trouble I'm going to encounter if I organize them by anything other than height.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

With a strong element of where one can find space to stick an extra book

[sabotabby]

I really need another bookshelf is the issue. But I don't want to buy one because as soon as my finances clear up a bit, I want to replace all of my bookshelves with ones that match.

[lienne.livejournal.com]

I organize my bookshelves by what fits where. Authors are always contiguous, and I try to keep sci-fi with sci-fi, fantasy with fantasy, and other with other, but beyond those restrictions it's basically just "okay, Lois Bujold just doubled in size; I'm going to have to move China Mieville to another shelf."

[sabotabby]

I found China Miéville in multiple places. Including multiple copies of the same book.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

I had had my library organized by the Library of Congress system, which unlike Dewey does not exempt works of fiction. It was gradually degrading over the years as I neglected to catalog new acquisitions. Then we moved, and just shoved the books onto shelves as we took them out of the boxes, the state of disarray in which they remain.

[symbioid.livejournal.com]

Sweet, sweet entropy.

[bitter-crimson.livejournal.com]

Err, I guessed from the comments that you mean, our personal bookshelves? (Unless we are librarians who run actual libraries? Which I'm not, sooooo.) I'd never call mine a library, heh. For the most part I organize things vaguely by subject, then by height. I don't like going, for example, shortTALLshortTALLshortTALL or whatnot. Put short books together and tall books together! Or have some kind of height gradient. But if subject relationships become too dispersed, that's also no good. Then you have the problem of, some books are too tall for a shelf at all, and must go on another shelf! (or must go sideways). ALSO! I like shelves to be horizontally full but not too packed, so books of different width may need to be distributed in order to ensure some kind of equal width-tightness of books on shelves.

And now I'm all staring at my shelf and getting really bothered by these books that are too tall and are currently situated sideways. *twitch*

[sabotabby]

Right now I don't have enough shelf for my books, period.

But yeah, I mean personal library. I made an attempt to organize by subject matter, but then does Subcommandante Marcos' mystery novel go with his political writing? I don't think so.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Library of Congress classification.

Failing that (see also, my home) roughly according to genre, then author alphabetical, and I reserve the right to give certain authors pride of place.

[sabotabby]

Ohhh...there's also the Lowest Bookshelf problem with cats.

[outcastspice.livejournal.com]

My personal library is alphabetical by author, within categories (fiction, general non-fic, science, religion, sex, film theory, psych theory). I would expect a public library to be similar or on the dewey decimal system.

[sabotabby]

I'm talking about personal libraries. That's what I get for posting before caffeine.

[akisawana.livejournal.com]

Long comment was long, and reflected that books have many uses in this house, that some of our collections are combined and some aren't, and that we have not nearly as many books now as we used to, owing to the magic of e-readers.
Then I realized that once you drill down to the level of "my books (being books that I am the only one in the house that would read them,)" they're "chronological according to last time picked up."
Guess I have something to do today!

[sabotabby]

I am never satisfied with my book organization system. It's going to take me much more than a day to figure this one out.

[sabotabby]

I think it looks cool. Doesn't make it easy to find books, though.

[misslynx.livejournal.com]

As a few others have said, alphabetically within categories. But I make exceptions for really tall books, which are generally treated as a category unto themselves, because if I tried to shelve them in with all the others it would (a) look funny, and (b) mean I would be able to fit fewer shelves on any given set of side supports, because they'd all have to be tall enough for the tallest books. So in practice I usually have one tall shelf at the bottom of any given bookcase (where the weight gives it extra stability, and then everything else is sorted first by category and then by author within each category.

Except that right now only parts of my shelves are organized that way. Somehow in this particular apartment I never quite finished the book organization. Hopefully I will remedy that with my next one.

[sabotabby]

Some of my huge books can't be put on a bottom shelf either because they're expensive art books and I don't want cat fur all over them. Ugh. What to do, what to do?

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Chronological by author

[sabotabby]

Author's birthdays?

[torontoteacher.livejournal.com]

By ease of access. Books that we want to get to often and easily are in the main living space as are new books and recent reads.

Other books are slightly further away and sorted roughly by topic/genre. But it's really a big treasure hunt.

[sabotabby]

I think that's how I've got it now. With newer books on the newest bookshelf. In all likelihood, this is how I'll continue to arrange my books.

I am dissatisfied with this system, though.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Color coordination makes me calmer.

[sabotabby]

Do you find it difficult to find things?

[rohmie.livejournal.com]

Mine are loosely organized by interest and often internally by author, albeit not alphabetically. For example, all my old school textbooks and monographs are together by the classes I read them for. Thus, my environmental history class books are all together, but internally there is no system except aesthetic whim. All my Orwell books are together next to my Steinbeck books because they both wrote fiction during the same period. Huxley's Brave New World is next to Orwell's 1984 because it seems right. My Introducing _______ and ________ for Beginners books are all together. My Cartoon History of the Universe books bridge the graphic novel and history sections. Within this flexible system, I also consider color and height. My system is essentially "That seems right. I'll remember that's there."

[sabotabby]

I am at the point where I have too many books to remember my sorting system or where I put them. And the art books and comics are a nightmare.

[pofflewomp.livejournal.com]

I am confused. I am also sad because I have been wanting to organise my books for about 15 years now. I finally have a library (/spare room) so can do so! But I am waiting for shelves to appear, as at the moment books are double thingied so I can't see them all. And Ihave got rid of about 150 books recently to make space. I used to have complicated systems based on author, subject and nice pretty colours on spines. Now everything is haphazard.

I once failed to get a job in a library because I could not shelve books in order. These days you have to have a postgraduate degree in librariness to work in a library, and the libraries are being closed down anyway.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, it is incredibly hard to find a library job. My mom works in a library. I very much wanted a page job as a teenager, but the library had rules against hiring family members of an employee. Accordingly, I don't know how to shelve at all.

[sadie-sabot.livejournal.com]

My books are organized mostly by subject, but there's exceptions, like I have a section for books written by people I know; and my spec fic paperbacks are on a separate shelf and organized by color.

I love the look of bookshelves organized by color and height, and I tend to have enough of a visual memory that i think I could probably still find what I was looking for if it was organized that way. Maybe someday.

[sabotabby]

Complications! I currently have a section for books designed by me, but I ran out of space, so I started a new section of books designed by me. Not to mention books by people I know.

[nichtsda.livejournal.com]

I tend to put them in order by height. The tallest book is always on the left end. My books are also kept in different locations, depending on the subject: graphic design or productivity type books by the desk, cookbooks in the kitchen, all other books in the bedroom.

I don't own many books overall, though. 3 moves in one year plus being broke = most of my books are library books.

[sabotabby]

I'm planning to put all of my books in the same room, finally. Well, except the ones I'm currently reading. There's a big stack of Brecht plays and other new acquisitions currently sitting on my scanner.

[metalana.livejournal.com]

General subject matter, then Height of book (for efficient shelving).

[sabotabby]

I wish authors didn't publish books of varying heights!

[ironed_orchid]

Mostly I sort by subject matter and alphabetical by author.

I just lump all my fiction in together these days, although I used to have a separate shelf for the sff stuff. I do have a separate bookcase for Pratchett and YA, but that has more to do with height and quantity than any other reason.

I nearly always end up with at least one section which is all the subjects on which I only have one or two books, and so they are all grouped together.

[sabotabby]

It's sad that my section on South Asian Maoist movements is disproportionately large compared to—other subjects.

What am I saying? That's awesome.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Hard backs seperated from mass-market for size reasons.
Alphabetical by author if novel or dedicated story collection. Alphabetical by editor if multi-author volume. Within author, alphabetical by title, but books in a series by series order, with entire series by title of first book. Books edited by someone after all books written by someone.

[sabotabby]

And you have a lot of books.

What about a series where you have some in paperback and some in hard?

[sabotabby]

Most people do. Weirdly, I don't have anything by Pratchett.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

I organize my books by size.

[sabotabby]

Makes sense.

[sadwizardscrypt.livejournal.com]

Organize by subject, and specifically by using the Library of Congress Classification. The advantage there is that you can easily look up a LC classification of most any book in the Library of Congress Catalog online. Classification by subject is about a thousand times easier when you don't have to worry about categorizing and and the consistency of your categorization.

[sabotabby]

Do you actually do this at home?

[dglenn.livejournal.com]

(Ugh. Dewey. *hissss* Ick.)

Either LC (because I've always been able to find the book I was looking for in libraries that used LC shelf numbers, but seldom able to do so in libraries that used Dewey), or more often for household books, fiction alpha by author with anthologies at one end and multi-author series at the other, with nonfiction grouped loosely by subject matter and the subjects organized by what shelves they fit on.

[sabotabby]

I think I went for something like this. It ended up less organized than I wanted it to be.