[FicusFan]

I have a question for people who have lots of books. How do you keep them in order physically so you can find them ?

I am not talking about a database or keeping track of them as data, but rather the books themselves.

I have split them between fiction and non-fiction. Within those groups I alphabetize by author. I don't want to break them down by subject or genre. I live in a small apartment, and have overflowed my book shelves. I have piles on table tops and on the floor around the edges of the rooms. The piles are so scattered and disjointed that I am having problems finding books. I have Only Forward for one of the book groups, but I have no idea where.

I am thinking about resorting so all the As are together and then the Bs and so on. But here is my problem -- there is no room left, so if I do that now the next time I buy books I would be unable to put them in order alphabetically. The out of order pile problem would start again. I don't want to have to start storing directions to the location of each book on my DB. :rolleyes: So what is the answer ? And no I am not open to giving them away or something like that :D (though I have started boxing up those I have read - which I hate, and then need room for the boxes ;) ).

How do people with lots of books and not enough room keep them in some kind of order so they can be found ? I just can't resort my whole library everytime I bring new ones home. :eek:

[Nightblade]

Hehe, sounds like the exact situation some of my friends [who have moved states] are in at present. :P

I'm pretty fortunate to have a lot of bookcases to allocate my fiction and non-fiction (fiction makes up the majority of stuff we have). They're all alphabetical by author's last name so its easier to keep track of the various series they write. My room pretty much contains all our science fiction collections whereas the fantasy mixes in with the non-fiction and thrillers and crime. (It's so nice to wake up and see all that literature that people had worked their guts out to produce and the silent distress that calls out to me to read them :D)

Recently, however, I've noticed that the shelves are getting very full and I fear my house will turn into something from that Read or Die animation, with books and dvds piled everywhere!

[JBI]

Alphebetically by Author's last name. Makes it very easy.

[kater]

I have a main 'to read' pile of no less than twenty books by the side of my bed so I can dip in to whatever I fancy at the time. I have a larger 'to read' pile of about forty books on the desk in my bedroom for restocking the bed pile. I store my paperbacks together alphabetically by author in a crammed section of cupboard space and then my hardbacks also alphabetically on six decent length shelves. I think I will soon have to store my hardbacks flat on top of each other as my shelves are deeper than they are wide.

[angel_vez]

I do the same thing you do (split between non-fiction and fiction and then alphabetise by author)... however i still manage to lose books because all my friends and family use me as a library and mess stuff up:mad: heh

[Monty Mike]

If it's that serious, Ficus (and I have no doubt in my mind that it is - seeing how much you read!), then why not consider moving to a larger appartment. Are there no places nearby or anything? Perhaps financially it's not an option (don't worry, I'm not asking you to tell me). It seems to me that your problem will otherwise continue getting worse and worse day by day.

Maybe you have friends or relatives that could help you out? Perhaps give a box to each of them :D :p

[ArthurFrayn]

Once they are out of boxes and off shelves, all bets are off. The only way to organize them is to box them, write a list of which there is a copy of in the box as well, label the box A,B, C etc. and start to stack them. The sides of the boxes should be labeled A,B,C, etc and be able to seen.Then you can look at a sheet or a list in your database and know what's in what box. Alphabetizing the books only adds unnecessary time to the process,IMO. Better to organize them according to a train of thought;you'll stand a better chance of finding what you're looking for. Keep out the intended reads for a select period of time,say, what you will read in three-six months. Box everything else. If it's totally nuts, you might have to think about storage. I did it.

If your shelves are full, see if there are books in them, that are not a source of current interest, that could be put away for a few years.I had a shelf of guitar books last year, and now 80% are packed away. Abandon nice looking shelf arrangements and start stacking books in tiers in the bookcase. I got a lot more storage mileage out of my bookcases when I abandoned the showcase aspect of them.
I've found that if one insists on buying new books on a regular basis, rearrangement every 6 months or so is inevitable. At that time hard choices have to be made. Will I read this or that book in the next 2 years? 5 years? Will I ever read this thing?

Watch stacking books on tables and chairs. You don't realize that you can easily have three hundred + +pounds of books resting continuously on skinny legs. A friend of mine poked a hole through the floor that way.


That's my 12 cents.

[Archren]

OK, like many here I've got fiction & non-fiction split, then alphabatized by author. Also I've got a separate to-read pile. What I do to avoid the restack-everything-with-every-new-book problem is that I set aside a space for recently finished books. When that pile gets high enough, I start from one end of the alphabet (say A) and shuffle the new stuff in, leaving some slack space at the other end of the alphabet. When the next cycle comes around, I start at the opposite end (now Z) and shuffle stuff in, leaving slack at the A end. However, that assumes you've got any slack space to work with, which Ficus obviously doesn't.

My husband and I replaced our closet doors with these moving bookcases. (http://www.spacexdoors.com/) It didn't take up much more space, but finally increased our bookshelf footage to where we've actually got unused shelves! It's not the easiest project in the world (took us about 3 weeks, but we weren't rushing anything), but it was really worth it to us, since we were seriously out of places to put bookcases.

[FicusFan]

Thanks everyone for your posts. I can't post just now, but I will get back to you soon on all your suggestions. Keep the ideas coming. :D

[ShadrachAnki]

You know that house of knowledge in Orson Scott Card's Wyrms, where moving a single piece of paper would make whatever knowledge was written on it lost for ever, since the creature maintaining the house would be unable to find it afterward? My current form of book organization is something like that. I just don't have nearly enough space for all my books to be nicely on shelves, so most of them are in boxes in the attic or piled around my room haphazardly. The books in my room are pretty much all books I haven't read yet, or that I haven't read in a while and want to reread.

Ideally, I would have my books divided into fiction and non-fiction, then arranged by author and series/subject matter. I probably wouldn't bother alphabetizing, since it would only mean more time spent rearranging things whenever I got new books.

~Shadrach Anki