Fellow book nerds, how do you organize and inventory your books?

[Anonymous]

I need to find a way to organize about 700-800 books. I am a pretty indecisive person and have looked at Libib, Storygraph, Library Things, book scanners but can't seem to commit...

I think i want to alphabetize the titles within some of these categories and also have a big master list of all these titles. How do you organize and categorize your books? And do you use the same app to also log your ebooks, audio books, and DVDs?

So far I have split my books into:

picture books (I still need to divide by topic or may non-fiction/fiction)
YA fiction
cookbooks
foreign language
adult non fiction: math and logic
adult non fiction: music and arts
adult non fiction: other hobbies
adult non fiction: general
older classic lit
modern lit

[Anonymous]

Ask in the book club forum.

[Anonymous]

I don't feel a need to inventory them.

[Anonymous]

My parents used to have a collection of books and they were just arranged by size and vaguely by author - there were even shallow bookshelves for pocket size editions. We knew where each book lived.

My uncle has a castle with a library room. The volumes are leather bound and gilt-edged and the shelves go up to the ceiling, with a movable ladder. They're all classics and mostly all the same size, arranged by author. He keeps his paperbacks in his bedroom and sitting room, all in haphazard piles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents used to have a collection of books and they were just arranged by size and vaguely by author - there were even shallow bookshelves for pocket size editions. We knew where each book lived.

My uncle has a castle with a library room. The volumes are leather bound and gilt-edged and the shelves go up to the ceiling, with a movable ladder. They're all classics and mostly all the same size, arranged by author. He keeps his paperbacks in his bedroom and sitting room, all in haphazard piles.

OP here and I'm a haphazard pile person by nature, but DD is starting to do the same and I think it's time to clean up my act. Also recently seen silverfish (yuck!).

[Anonymous]

I don’t have that many books but the only ones I keep in a separate place are my cook books and unread books. For the rest, I do roughly keep the reference/self-help books separate from fiction. I also tend to keep my favorite fiction together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My parents used to have a collection of books and they were just arranged by size and vaguely by author - there were even shallow bookshelves for pocket size editions. We knew where each book lived.

My uncle has a castle with a library room. The volumes are leather bound and gilt-edged and the shelves go up to the ceiling, with a movable ladder. They're all classics and mostly all the same size, arranged by author. He keeps his paperbacks in his bedroom and sitting room, all in haphazard piles.

Please tell us more about your Uncle’s castle!

[Anonymous]

I have a ton of non fiction for work systematically sorted by subject matter. Within each fairly specific category (e g. Neocolonialism-South East Asia) I don't bother to arrange by author because I keep the categories subdivided so specifically by topic and geography that none takes up more than a shelf. These are all in nice built in shelves on the walls of my home office.

Fiction is a haphazard mess in the more public areas of my house. I do have a slight complex that people coming over who don't know me well probably think I'm anti-intellectual. I read intense stuff for work so my pleasure reading is pretty light.

[Anonymous]

You can get a barcode scanner!

There was an adorable video during the pandemic made by a guy who bought one for his wife and she giggled as she scanned their books into a database.

https://www.hookedtobooks.com/home-library-apps/

[Anonymous]

I got rid of them, and am using a Kindle.

It took me months. I'm a writer and have a grad degree in English and had hundreds of them. I got tired of them collecting dust. I did occasionally re-read them, or consult them, but it still wasn't worth it to me to keep them.

But before I got rid of them, I had them in categories similar to yours, and I had the fiction alphabetized by author's last name. Everything else was organized intuitively if that makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I got rid of them, and am using a Kindle.

It took me months. I'm a writer and have a grad degree in English and had hundreds of them. I got tired of them collecting dust. I did occasionally re-read them, or consult them, but it still wasn't worth it to me to keep them.

But before I got rid of them, I had them in categories similar to yours, and I had the fiction alphabetized by author's last name. Everything else was organized intuitively if that makes sense.

This pp ^ again... FWIW, I took them to McKay's and sold them. Took months and months as they only take a few buckets at a time, so it was quite a job, but it was worth it to me. The pay isn't much, but you are sending them to new homes rather than putting them in a landfill. Just read your comment about silverfish, OP -- I hereby empower you to get rid of them.

[Anonymous]

hoarders mount up!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My parents used to have a collection of books and they were just arranged by size and vaguely by author - there were even shallow bookshelves for pocket size editions. We knew where each book lived.

My uncle has a castle with a library room. The volumes are leather bound and gilt-edged and the shelves go up to the ceiling, with a movable ladder. They're all classics and mostly all the same size, arranged by author. He keeps his paperbacks in his bedroom and sitting room, all in haphazard piles.

Please tell us more about your Uncle’s castle!

Oh, it's pretty boring. Some ancestor built it during the French Revolution, and since he didn't want to lose his head, he was nice to his workers and went with a very sober esthetic, without all the usual decorations and stonework. The back staircase has been threatening to disintegrate for two decades now - you take your life in your hands every time you use it. The only point of interest is that there is a cute intact medieval castle on the property, that my family has used to house grounds staff and various animals for ages. For the past decades it's been where the horses and hunting hounds live.

Other relatives own historically important castles. Nearly all were commandeered by German high command or officers during WWII, and my great-grandparents and others of that generation had to cede entire floors to the occupying force. My great-grandfather listened to Resistance messages on the radio on the floor right above Rommel.

[Anonymous]

I don't keep many around these days. I did a purge a few years ago and was grossed out by how dusty the old books were, so now I pass them on unless they mean something me personally.

[Anonymous]

Color of the binding.