Thursday, October 21, 2010

The "Library"

I spent last weekend organizing my home "library." We have a small room that is good for little but bookshelves, and I have needed to unpack several boxes of books for some time now. Most of them are up. Here's the challenge: how does one organize a home library, when (1) there is enough diversity of reading that simply alphabetizing may be confusing; (2) there are few enough books that categorizing by topic becomes a little silly; (3) space is sufficiently limited that I need a shelf or two just for small paperbacks (to limit unused "air space" above books); (4) I like to keep bookshelves in various places so a book is always handy; and various other limitations that aren't jumping at me right now.

I have categorized thusly:

Politics, history and biography
Philosophy and religion
Novels and literature
Drama and poetry
Sports, games and hobbies
Running, cycling and triathlon
Climbing
Paddling and whitewater
Travel and language
Law
Economics and finance

There are obvious overlaps, but because each of the three sporting sub-categories can claim more than a shelf, I decided to separate them out. It nonetheless seems a little silly to section the home library 11 different ways for 500 or so volumes.

The need to shelve books together by height makes it hard to alphabetize within a category. The Novels and Literature category is something of a mess.

What do you do with, for example, "Never Turn Back," the biography of Walt Blackadar, one of the great whitewater kayaking pioneers? (Blackadar was the first to run the Turnback Canyon on the Alsac -- solo -- and the first to run Devil's Canyon of the Susitna, which are perhaps the two fiercest expedition whitewater runs in the U.S.) Biography or whitewater?

How do others organize theirs?

1 comment:

  1. I am probably the worst person for advice about this sort of thing. I take a pragmatic antiformalist position that the purpose is to be find able to find books, nothing more. I tend to favor loose groupings like plays (mostly my wife's), poetry, first editions,etc. I then make the most of the remaining space often end up sorting by size with stacks of paperbacks on the sides to maximize space. Not sure it would work for anyone else.

    My real nightmare is that next fall I have to pack all my office books while my floor is being renovated. In addition to worrying they will disappear in the process, I have to figure out best to pack and then reshelve for my eventual new office which may or may not have the same size and number of book shelves.

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