Comments on: Category crisis: how should I (re)organize my library?

By: caroline hill

caroline hill — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 07:05:49 +0000

I organize books chronologically. other categories are too difficult. I have a bunch of 17th c shelves (and earlier) to pre-rev; Amer. Rev. shelves; and 19th-20th c together because I don’t teach those courses regularly. I have a couple of Atlantic history shelves and some women’s history shelves. Latter trumps all other categories.
QED.

By: Matt L

Matt L — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:17:38 +0000

What a fun thread! At home, there is no organization, except the dictionaries are in easy reach of the computer. In the office books basically organized by teaching and research projects. The articles are similarly organized by project, in a file cabinet or as a pdf on the computer (I have been trying to keep track of those with refworks and now zotero, but that is an endless struggle).

Nobody else can find anything, but I can usually track down the book I need.

By: PhDinHistory

PhDinHistory — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:09:36 +0000

What about LC?

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:42:05 +0000

Many thanks to all of you for sharing your various schemes for organizing. Mark K. is correct that I am “interested in conceptual categories (classification) mostly instrumentally, as an aid to finding specific books (location)–it’s not the filing that’s so important as the ability to find them again once I’ve filed them.

One thing I’ll add to the discussion of the color-coded library (and thanks, Clio B., for the lovely, surreal photos of that art exhibit!): because colors are either in or out of fashion, color-coding a library might also be a means of ordering things roughly chronologically. My book has a currently-fashionable pale khaki spine, but soon it will look as frowsy and as out-of-date as all of those late 60s and 70s books with the aqua-tinted covers.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s nothing to be done except to exapand the number of categories I use in shelving. So, in addition to “New England/Middle Colonies/Chesapeake/Lower South/Caribbean,” which is an organizational scheme that still makes sense for most of the books published before 1995 or so, I’ll just continue to add new categories. (I didn’t mention that I’ve long had a separate shelf for Native American history and for women’s history, so to those I’ll have to add borderlands, history of sexuality/the body, perhaps historical biography, environmental history, etc.)

The advantage to building on my current scheme is that I won’t forget where I’ve shelved my pre-1995 books (since they’ll stay where I’ve kept them for 19 years). I might have trouble remembering where I’ve put more recent books, but it’s not altogether unpleasant to get lost and rediscover old friends or titles I’ve forgotten about, on my hunt for le livre juste. (Unless, that is, I’m madly trying to prep for class or finish an essay and can’t find something I know I own!)

By: Penny

Penny — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:05:50 +0000

I colorcode too! I can almost always remember what a book looked like, even if I can’t recall the author or title. So if I keep all the red books, blue books, green books, tan books, white books, etc. together (and sort by size–another visual cue), I can usually find what I’m looking for pretty quickly. Exception is the shelving next to my desk, which of necessity is limited to books related to current projects, and references I use very often, and my own pubs (so I can look up page numbers or whatever).

By: Bing McGhandi

Bing McGhandi — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:32:59 +0000

Henry Petroski! Other People read him! Yay!

By: Kathie

Kathie — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:11:57 +0000

Rather than describe my own shelves (the ever-expanding sections on African women and on Mozambique, while I try to cut back on some of the other areas of African history that I simply do not have space for …), I want to recommend a couple of books about owning books.

First, Anne Fadiman’s essays in _Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader_ are all simply wonderful. I liked one, “Marrying Libraries,” about how she and her husband merged their libraries (what do you do about duplicates?), and another about Gladstone’s book _On Books and the Housing of Them_ – yes, that Gladstone, better known as British prime minister. And she has an essay that begins: “It has long been my belief that everyone’s library contains an Odd Shelf. On this shelf rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection, reveals a good deal abut its owner.” The whole book is utterly charming.

Second, a more technical but fascinating study of the history of libraries, Henry Petroski’s _The Book on the Book Shelf_, which begins with scrolls in ancient times, and includes an appendix addressing the question, “How can we arrange the books on our bookshelves?” – in which he includes 25 different schemas from the obvious (author’s name, subject), to the less so (color or size, read and unread), and more.

By: Rad Readr

Rad Readr — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:49:22 +0000

historymaven raies an important point about color coding. I have several shelves on Latino lit/culture and they are as colorful as a Mexican restaurant. Bright orange seems to dominate. By contrast, my nineteenth century American (U.S.) shelves tend toward the blueish, darkish tints. And then there is the Cuba section, in which the bright colors of the Caribbean struggle against the blueish, darkish tones of imperialism. Or is that mimicry of some sort.

By: Bing McGhandi

Bing McGhandi — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 05:08:35 +0000

I would make sure that you have a shelf reserved for ones that you use a lot. An “active” shelf, if you will.

Mine are sorted by…hm. Good question…

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:42:44 +0000

Totally intuitive in my case. Once in a while things sort of migrate into what might look like order, but this is really evanescent, like cosmic dust. Keeping them off of the *floor* is the bigger challenge. Bigger still is having books at two ends of a medium-sized state and always needing one that you can’t find quickly at either end. This is about the only thing that makes Kindle sound interesting to me. I saw my first Kindle on Saturday, coincidentally, on the counter of a local diner in front of an adjacent customer. I had to squelch an impulse to see how it would look covered with a spilled cup of hot coffee! Bad.