We need to rearrange our library and don't know how.

Alphabetic by author would be the obvious choice. But then Brave New World would end up next to Manga Love Story. And C++ compiler design would be surrounded by Snow Crash and Heavy Weather.

Alphabetic within categories raises the question about the categories. Plus series like Shadowrun would be split by author.


Any suggestions?

Series always go together, and then alphabetic within categories.
Ain't no fucking way I'd put C++ next to my lovely fiction.

quote:

Originally posted by Newromancer:

We need to rearrange our library and don't know how.

Alphabetic by author would be the obvious choice. But then Brave New World would end up next to Manga Love Story. And C++ compiler design would be surrounded by Snow Crash and Heavy Weather.

Alphabetic within categories raises the question about the categories. Plus series like Shadowrun would be split by author.


Any suggestions?

Uh, yeah. You need to drink and fuck around more. A lot more. And stop ironing those socks.

Mine are arranged according to Library of Congress catalog number....

quote:

Uh, yeah. You need to drink and fuck around more. A lot more. And stop ironing those socks.

All true, except I've never ironed socks in my life.

Dewey Decimal System

And which categories you use ought to depend on what you have lots of!
If you have lots of sci fi it might be worth subdividing even that into sub genres.

You need an arcane system that makes perfect sense to you, and you alone.

Works for me!

quote:

Originally posted by Gromit:

You need an arcane system that makes perfect sense to you, and you alone.

Works for me!

Spoken like a man who wipes it dry on the drapes.

Advance Australia Fair.

The cluster system.

LOL I was going to map out my cubes as well. Perhaps later.

quote:

Originally posted by Newromancer:
We need to rearrange our library and don't know how.

Alphabetic by author would be the obvious choice. But then Brave New World would end up next to Manga Love Story. And C++ compiler design would be surrounded by Snow Crash and Heavy Weather.

Alphabetic within categories raises the question about the categories. Plus series like Shadowrun would be split by author.


Any suggestions?

All fiction goes in alpha by author unless you want to break it down by genre as well. the exception are series which you clump together at the end of the "sci-fi" section and order by number of the book rather than author. If no number on book, go by date of release.

Break down into other categories for non-fiction and do one of the following:

Aplha by author all the way.

For "one shelf" amounts, go tall to small, it looks nice or go tall at the ends converging to small in the middle to produce a V shape.

Try not to break down things into sub-sub categories.

Front the books to the edge of the shelf accepting that some are too long to fit there. these go at the right end of said shelf.

You can label your sections as in abookstore or you can use comics plastic baords to separate categories.

All fiction together by author. All history together by author. All other non-fiction together by author. That's how I do it, but I have a lot of history books, so maybe my perspective is skewed.

Yeah, you have to go by what large amounts of books you can lump together.

Actually, I subdivide my history books because the largest single grouping I have is medieval European history (and specifically Christian history) so that takes up most of the space.

quote:

(and specifically Christian history)

No wonder you're an atheist.

A New Book Order. And library with 1000 points of light?

So... you guys shelve your books, eh?

My book arranging really lost some steam when I had to go two deep on some of my shelves. Since then books just stay where ever they fall.

I should add most of my books are in LoC order, taking up space on three 5-shelf units in the location most people would use for a dining area. A few (mainly textbooks) migrated into the living room and sprawl chaotically on the lower shelves near the video library....

I arranged them in LoC order to more easily be able to find related books at colleges or universities. By doing so I began to see new patterns of how certain topics get spread in the school libraries and I find myself able to locate interesting books without doing computer searches simply by browsing interesting call letters when visiting new schools....

LoC? Library of Congress?

[QUOTE
Uh, yeah. You need to drink and fuck around more. A lot more. And stop ironing those socks.[/QUOTE]
This is just hilarious. Thank you MoM.