unfuckyourhabitat:
surrealite asked you:
2012-07-12 14:42
Hi!So I hoped this hasn’t been asked before but do you or any of your followers have any idea on how to organise the home library? I have books for all different kind of things (school, lit, old children’s books) but no idea on how to organise it so any ideas would be more than welcome :)
(Making this answerable and rebloggable.) Archivists! Librarians! Book enthusiasts! I know you guys have suggestions. What do you think is a good system?
In addition to finding a good system (I strongly endorse separating fiction & nonfiction, separating other subgenres as practical for your library, and keeping "special collections" (like all the Star Trek books, all the signed hardcovers, or a shelf full of absolute favorites) together), contemplate unfucking in other ways.
A library tracker like LibraryThing or Goodreads is awesome. In addition to helping you figure out what you have going on when you're at home, it can help you, and potentially any book-buying friends with gifts on their mind, prevent duplicates when shopping.
Do you have multiple copies of the same book? Do you need multiple copies of that book? (Sometimes that answer is yes: there's the precious signed first-edition hardcover in like-new condition, and the tattered paperback that goes around town with you to actually read. Or the loaner copy of that awesome book because you're not going to risk being without it when one of your flaky friends doesn't return it.) If you do not actually need multiple copies, do something about the duplicates.
Check across formats for duplicates. Hardback and paperback, obviously, but if you do ebooks, you may surprise yourself.
So you've organized and taken care of the duplicates. What other problems could there be? Well, what about holes in the collection? After alphabetizing by author, organize within that author's works. Look for a series missing book 1 or book 2. Sometimes there are reasons to have part of a series but omit other parts -- I will never own Windows on a Lost World because it sucks, no matter how many other Star Trek books I own -- but I was very sad at one point to discover that I was missing part of the Foreigner series. (And I repaired that mistake to the point of getting accidental duplicates.)
Some of my friends are paring down their physical book collection and keeping only the absolute favorites and hard to find books in physical format, and either listing the books they once had and might get again on a special library list, or outright replacing them with electronic versions. Some good candidates for replacement might be stuff you keep for reference. Electronic text is a lot more searchable than paper.
If a book is physically falling apart, it may be in need of repair, replacement, or discarding.
If you have books in your library that represent your tastes ten or more years ago, and you're crunched for space, look over some of the older ones. Obviously throwing out old favorites is counterproductive, but some of the books that you only medium-liked ten years ago may not have stood up to time very well. I adored the Baby-Sitters' Club books when I was approximately eleven, but attempting to re-read them at age twenty resulted in a huge load of books for Gulliver's. Gah.
(Crossposted from Tumblr.)
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