Organizing the Books in Your Home, Part 1: How to Shelve Like a Librarian

Organizing the Books in Your Home, Part 1: How to Shelve Like a Librarian:

cheshirelibrary:

For some readers, organizing book by color—or size or date acquired—works. But bibliophiles seeking a more robust classification scheme for their beloved tomes may want to consider borrowing a few ideas from librarians.

Before You Begin

Even before you start taking down titles from your shelves or tackling the books piled up on bedside tables, it’s important to decide what you want and need from your home collection. Begin by asking yourself (and the people who share your home) a few basic questions:

• How often do I refer to and need quick access to these books?

• Do I own enough books to make it worthwhile to develop a system for keeping them organized?

• Where will I put the books once I have them organized into distinct sections?

• Do I have enough shelf space to expand my collection as I acquire more books in the future?

• What subject areas or genres are my favorites that I may want to highlight in unique ways?

Do You Dewey?

The basic structure of Dewey Decimal Classification may provide a good starting-point for shelf organization, particularly for nonfiction, informational books. Here’s how it works: all information is organized into ten main classes by subject, discipline, or field of study, identified by a three-digit number:

• 000 —General Information, Computer Science

• 100 —Philosophy & Psychology

• 200 —Religion

• 300 —Social Sciences

• 400 —Language

• 500 —Science

• 600 —Technology

• 700 —Arts & Recreation

• 800 —Literature

• 900 —History & Geography

Those categories are likely broad enough to start creating piles of the books in your home. This may be all you need to start organizing your shelves. You could start by looking at each title in your collection and determining which of the ten classes it fits into. For example, Truman Capote’s true crime classic, In Cold Blood, would fall under the 300s (social sciences); Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time would fall under the 500s (science); and The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou would fall under the 800s (literature).

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