- A shelf is one of the simplest and most popular pieces of furniture. Its purpose is to hold, store, and/or display an item or a group of items. A book shelf is simply a shelf or a collection of shelves designated to store and display books, periodicals, and book-related items, such as book-ends and writing materials.
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A book shelf, at its simplest, is a single, flat piece of board, glass, metal, or other solid material; it is attached to wall bracket and mounted on the wall, or it is attached via screws or nails to two end pieces, which are often then attached to other shelf pieces. Multi-shelf units are formed by longer end pieces (which stand vertically) with horizontal shelf pieces attached at intervals to the two end pieces.
There are two basic types of bookshelves: wall-mounted and free-standing. Within those two divisions are two other major categories: a single shelf unit or a multi-shelf unit.
Wall-mounted shelves are usually single shelf units. They are mounted on wall-mounted brackets or other wall-mounted supports, and the brackets are then attached to the wall.
Free-standing bookshelves are usually multi-shelf units. Though these free-standing shelves may also have the necessary hardware to attach them to the wall for greater stability, they can function without being attached to the wall.
Though the simplest, single shelf, wall-mounted book shelves can be very small, the most common types of book shelves are large enough to be considered a substantial piece of furniture. Small book shelves are attractive, but not extremely functional, as they can only hold a few books. Larger, multi-shelf units usually range from about three feet to six or eight feet high, with a width that commonly varies from three feet to six feet. However, many built-in book shelf units can be much larger than these common sizes, and book shelves used to hold very large collection (as in libraries) will have a much greater width, if not a greater height as well. Most book shelves are about 18 inches deep. -
The first large libraries of the world used shelves different than those we know today; in Athens, at Aristotles' library, as in the Alexandrian Library founded by Ptolemios, the books were parchments; shelves were still large, often wooden units, but were arranged more as cubby-holes, into which various parchment collections could be stored after being categorized. As parchments developed into books, the shelves designed to hold them developed alongside.
The United States Library of Congress, which is currently the largest library in the world, has over 500 miles of shelving to hold its collection. - Much has changed for bookshelves. Now not only do people purchase and use traditional bookshelves to hold print material, they also use virtual bookshelves. Many organizations and libraries have converted older print material to online media, or e-books, and offer these collections to their users via virtual bookshelves. Other services, such as BookMooch and BookIns, offer users a way to "display" their print collections online to other users, and then trade, barter, or sell their books to one another.
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Book shelves provide a way to store, organize, view, and access your collection of books in an attractive manner that can fit in to the décor of any home. Most book shelves are just deep enough to hold books but slim enough to take up minimal floor space. When books are stored on book shelves, you can view all the spines, find the title you are looking for, and remove it without disturbing the other books. That's not as easy when you are trying to remove the bottom book from a stack on the floor, or have to dig through boxes to find the one book you need.
It's also simple and effective to label book shelves, once you have the books arranged as you want them. You can arrange alphabetically by author or by title, or you can categorize your books into types or subjects that make sense for you and your book collection. Commonly used type categorizations include Poetry, Novels, Biographies, Textbooks, History, and Reference. Subject categorization simply depends on which subjects your books cover: anything from Home Decorating to How-To Manuals to Romantic-Era Literature to Spirituality could work for a book shelf labeling system.
