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Dewey, LOC, Color
In the real world, I have recently moved.
I currently don’t own an ereader, but after packing and unpacking all those books, I want one just so I don’t have to pack so much next time! Of course, an ereader would only solve the problem of future books, not current books. My last major move was in 2007, and it inspired the post My Own Private Library. One of my big questions then, and still a big question, is — how to organize the books?
You’d think it would be easy, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s not like the books were unorganized in the last place I lived. The thing is, the new place is a different set up, more rooms (yay), and bookshelves will be in different places. What books go where? What in the bedroom, the living room, the office?
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Right now, I’m sorting the books into the following categories: personal library, professional library, review related. The first are, well, my own books. The second are ones that I have for professional reasons, titles like The Best in Children’s Books 1979-1984. Why, yes, I own the whole series; wait, you don’t?
Another subset of professional are the books I’ve read for my current YALSA committee.
Finally, the review related is basically the books and ARCs to be read for this blog. Sadly, it looks like I will not have room for a kitchen bookshelf, which means I also have to decide where to put the cookbooks and magazines.
Review related will be organized by author; I’ve tried by publisher and by release date and neither quite worked for me.
My personal library will be mostly by author, with certain nonfiction subsets for history or biography. The professional library will be alpha by author.
The bigger question, and one I’m having a harder time judging, is what rooms these books go into so I don’t split them up. Here’s my big question — what’s the best way to go about doing this? My past method has been to first organize the books on the floor and then put it on the shelves, after I know how many titles, etc.
I also think I’m finally going to go ultra organized and actually enter everything into Library Thing. Is there an app for the iPhone I can download to scan barcodes to make that easier?
Tips, suggestions and advice are welcome, as are war stories on how you organized your own books.
Filed under: Reviews
About Elizabeth Burns
Looking for a place to talk about young adult books? Pull up a chair, have a cup of tea, and let's chat. I am a New Jersey librarian. My opinions do not reflect those of my employer, SLJ, YALSA, or anyone else. On Twitter I'm @LizB; my email is lizzy.burns@gmail.com.
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