(Untitled)

[inthewall]

If anybody has any interesting ideas on how to organize a book collection, I'd be interested. I was thinking about defaulting to subject/area and then to author, but that seems...well, I've done it before. I was also thinking autobiographical reference could be a possibility, but then some of the series I have (Alexander McCall Smith's books comes

Comments

[wwitchbaby]

I've done mine by color before (sort of like this http://freshome.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/rainbow-bookshelf.jpg, although it wasn't quite that cool with my collection). It can be frustrating if you can't remember the color of a book jacket, or if you use your shelves for reference a lot, but I really enjoyed the randomness of how the books were placed side by side because of it; I ended up actually looking at what books I had, I think, instead of just lumping them together in my head by subject.

[the_wanderer]

I suggest chronologically by publication date.

[lightwalker]

You could break them up according to what you use them for - textbooks and reference, comfort reading, favorite loaners/informational, fiction collection, etc. When I have a bunch of smaller shelves instead of one mongo bookcase I usually do that and it feels pleasingly organic.