How to organize a book library.

Always searching for a certain book to read or lend to a friend? Do you have trouble remembering what books you have? Organizing your books and making a list of inventory for your books is easy and will help you get the most out of your home library.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Spiral or Three-ring notebook(I recommend three-ring with removable pages OR
• Word or Excel Document on your computer (or similar)
• Bookshelves, or stackable crates or boxes.

1. First set up the area or areas where you will store your books (bookshelves, boxes or crates).

2. Next, depending on the quantity of books you are dealing with, label pages with the letters of the alphabet (in notebooks or on the computer..if you are using excel, label columns with letters).

3. Begin sorting books into piles or areas by first letter of title, or of author's last name whichever you prefer, but remember, BE CONSISTENT. If you aren't, finding a book will still be difficult. If you decide that titles beginning with "The" should begin with the letter of the second word, this is fine...but again, BE CONSISTENT.

4. As you are sorting the books, be sure to make an entry for each book on your lists including at least the title and the author. If you prefer to add a summary or description and publication dates, this is up to you.

5. When you have sorted all of your books into piles, and made entries on your lists (how long this will take will depend on how many books you own), you can stop at this point, and just put your books on the shelves in a more "generalized" alphabetical order, choosing a bookshelf to start with and continuing down and into other shelves in other rooms, depending on how you have your living space set up or, you can continue organizing alphabetically further by alphabetizing each letter section, for example in the As, first titles that begin with Aa, then Ab, then Ac, etc.

6. If you decide to further alphabetize sections, you should probably also further alphabetize your lists. Be sure to leave spaces between entries for when you buy new books, so you can add them to your well-organized library. Now when you want to find a book, it should be easy, and if you lend a book, you can add a note by its entry about to whom you lent it, and when.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have a very extensive library, a more extensive alphabetization, or perhaps dividing your books first into topics or categories (i.e., novels, how-to, biographies) and then alphabetizing might be a better option.
• If you have lots of shelving in various areas of the house, drawing a diagram of how you have alphabetized the books could be helpful (at least until you get the organization memorized.
• Don't pile your books too high during the organization process, you could suffer serious injuries in a book avalanche.
• If you, like me, are a messy person, don't be discouraged by the initial disorder this process causes. If you are a book lover with lots of books, this can be a daunting task.

[cherry67]

on 10/3/2008 great article