Does anybody have some tips on how to best organize/catalogue a home library?

I plan to accumulate a lot more over the years so I'd rather start now when my collection is rather small. I have small kids so I want it to be user friendly for them as they grow up and different topics interest them.

I probably only have 100-200 books now and they're all pretty varied in genre. Any help would be appreciated.

CC09LawAg said:

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Does anybody have some tips on how to best organize/catalogue a home library?

I plan to accumulate a lot more over the years so I'd rather start now when my collection is rather small. I have small kids so I want it to be user friendly for them as they grow up and different topics interest them.

I probably only have 100-200 books now and they're all pretty varied in genre. Any help would be appreciated.

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When you've only got a small selection I suggest organizing by genre. Then by either author or title within that. This is generally the best for most small home libraries upto around 1000 volumes. My folks have around 2000 and it's split in two rooms. Non-fiction is in one, fiction in the other, then each case is roughly one genre, murder mystery, thrillers, classics, history, science, reference, law, politics etc.

This works really well for them and is pretty useful.

They're getting up there so my brother and I might help them rearrange it with the heavier and less used stuff lower and the lighter and more frequently read items higher. Might rotate them once or twice a year as a family thing.

Any idea where to find a good, general list of genres?

Probably a dumb question but I know I will end up categorizing things in one when I should've done another because I forgot about it and may only have a few books that land in that category.

This is what I do (I also have a small physical library these days, most of my books are digital now) but I also subdivide genres where it makes sense. Best example is history, where I have a "WWII" section and an "Everything Else" section. Watching this thread with interest for ideas.

This is kind of where I struggle - with things like Atlas Shrugged, it's kind of dystopian in a sense but it's also political fiction, so do I stick it in with 1984/Animal Farm/Brave New World? Do you just have an Ayn Rand section?

Just trying to think long term and want my kids to feel comfortable that if they like something in one section, if they move over a book or two and grab something at random that it'll be the same general subject matter that they liked.

I used to greatly prefer physical books over e-books (Kindle), but over the last few years I've completely swapped.

I'm wondering if you've considered switching to a digital library, where can apply tags/labels to books/docs/etc which sort of eliminates the need to adhere to any organization.

If you've only got a couple hundred volumes, I don't know that you need to overthink it. Split them into fiction and non-fiction and then if you need to break down further into broad categories based on what you have and sort by author from there. If you have ten non-fiction history books, there's probably not a huge need to segregate The Guns of August (WW1) from An Army At Dawn (WW2). On the other hand, if you have eighty history books, maybe it does make sense to separate your Roman history books from Shelby Foote's three-part history of the U.S. Civil War.

That is what I have now, but I've probably filled in maybe 1/10 of my shelving space set aside for it.

I plan on expanding it a lot - so I want to start with a plan so I'm not having to go back and do it once it gets to be out of hand, because then I'll likely never do it.

CC09LawAg said:

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No way - if anything I plan on expanding my library tenfold.

I've seen way too many digital things altered, had things I "owned" taken away from me, etc.

A big part of my reason for building it is to have my kids keep a connection with physical ownership in a world that is trending towards everything being digital ownership - which I would argue you never truly "own".

But that's all for another thread.

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It's possible to convert kindle books to pdf and save them on your hard drive. That way they can't ever be taken from you simply by flipping a switch at Amazon HQ.

When I was teaching I had classroom library of about 2500 books. I organized them in to basic genres like fantasy, sci-fi, contemporary fiction, etc. Then I would go alpha by author last name.


I used Booksource to scan in all the books so I had a searchable list of what I had.

I built a 2,500 book library, and later a matching set of built-in desks w/ shelves where we can store about a 1,000 more books, We probably have it at 2/3 capacity.

Wife uses Bookshelf (app) to catalogue items, and tries to organize by type. I had an alphanumeric grid system when I built the cabinets & shelves and she adopted it for keeping track of where things are.

I have a decent collection of about 500 books on pre-20th Century Texas history, plus some other ancient histories and the like. They're broken up into topical sections: Spanish Texas, Republic, Comanches, Civil War, etc. by author. I also collect first or notable editions of the books considered essential for a Texas research library as listed in Basic Texas Books by John Jenkins. These are kept separately in their own case. I use LibraryThing to catalog my collection. You can see it here: https://www.librarything.com/profile/devilyack

Like others, I mostly group by genre and then subgenre. I don't bother ordering by author or title although all of an author's work usually ends up together. For instance, all sci-fi is grouped near one another. Within that, I might group those about robots/tech together, group those about space/aliens, group those about zombies, etc. I do the same for history non-fiction (grouped by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Medieval England, etc.).

I started placing them in my shelves based on the ones I wanted to be at eye level or on the middle shelves first. Those usually included some of my favorites or some of my best looking books. Then I added the rest based on the genres I mentioned. I generally keep heavier or larger books, like textbooks on the bottom shelf.

The Dog Lord said:

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Like others, I mostly group by genre and then subgenre. I don't bother ordering by author or title although all of an author's work usually ends up together. For instance, all sci-fi is grouped near one another. Within that, I might group those about robots/tech together, group those about space/aliens, group those about zombies, etc. I do the same for history non-fiction (grouped by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Medieval England, etc.).

I started placing them in my shelves based on the ones I wanted to be at eye level or on the middle shelves first. Those usually included some of my favorites or some of my best looking books. Then I added the rest based on the genres I mentioned. I generally keep heavier or larger books, like textbooks on the bottom shelf.

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For sci-fi/fantasy/fiction series, I also group them together and order by publication date. When I had a full Bond book collection, this kept all of the Ian Fleming, Kingsley Amis, and John Gardner novels together. (Sidenote: I didn't continue with all of the other novels commissioned by the Fleming estate. Maybe someday.)

Super helpful, keep em coming!

I like the idea of keeping the catalogue digitally. Was going to do a spreadsheet but an app would be way easier.

I have fiction by author and non-fiction by subject. That's just what works for me in terms of remembering how to find something.

A spreadsheet isn't a bad idea either, so if you can remember author, subject, or title you'd have a reminder where you put the book.

Fun thread! We currently do it by Fiction and Non-fiction and then from there we (my wife) does something I haven't seen mentioned yet and is a total girl thing to do - she groups the books by color. Part of me hates this but part of me appreciates it because it does look kind of neat.

When we moved about 1.5 years ago, we bought some cheap IKEA like shelves and put them in the guest bedroom just to store books for now. We've already outgrown those shelves.

Our more permanent solution is going to convert our dining room into a full blown library / lounge. I can't wait to do this; just collecting design ideas for inspiration right now.

DevilYack said:

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I have a decent collection of about 500 books on pre-20th Century Texas history, plus some other ancient histories and the like. They're broken up into topical sections: Spanish Texas, Republic, Comanches, Civil War, etc. by author. I also collect first or notable editions of the books considered essential for a Texas research library as listed in Basic Texas Books by John Jenkins. These are kept separately in their own case. I use LibraryThing to catalog my collection. You can see it here: https://www.librarything.com/profile/devilyack

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Does this do the same thing as GoodReads? I've tracked all the books I've read for years and then it will let you loosely track a library using digital "shelves", but it's not great for the latter.

I've never used GoodReads, so I don't know how they are similar/different. LibraryThing is sort of like an electronic card catalog and database mashed together. You can usually upload book data based on ISBN (if there is one) or Library of Congress number and then input a wide range of additional data. I use tags to sort mine by subject, but it also automatically includes LoC or Dewey numbers if you're into that level of detail. Since most of my books are in the Texas history area, those aren't that useful for me.

One neat aspect is that there is an app you can use that lets you check your library from the bookstore so I can make sure I'm not buying a book I already own. I have done this more times than I care to admit.

Don't catalog by spreadsheet. I did that with my CD collection for years and struggled with version control as I wanted to keep archival copies in case of corruption. I added CDs but some didn't get entered so I had various lists from, say, 2005 that had discs in there that a 2007 list didn't have -- for whatever reason.

Now, I use a web based app called libib for all my book and CD collection. The cool thing is that you don't need to enter anything but the ISBN (or ISSN/music equivalent) and it USUALLY pops the title and book info right up. You can separate out CDs, magazines, whatever you've got. Obviously, you will need to manually enter some things if it isn't in the database. I have a ton of locally recorded music and books from small, out of business, publishers that didn't make it into their database. But that's no big deal. They have an app that, while I haven't used it, I think it will allow you to enter things via bar code.

Anyway, check it out: libib.com.

Don't listen to the goobers who have posted so far. Do what all the fashionable instagrammers do and arrange by color, with the spines facing the wall. This method ensures a visually pleasing display while sacrificing the ability to find anything with any sense or order!

This looks legit - thanks!

YouBet said:

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Our more permanent solution is going to convert our dining room into a full blown library / lounge. I can't wait to do this; just collecting design ideas for inspiration right now.

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That's cool. We ended up putting our second set of shelves in the dining room as well (wife calls it the Library Annex ). Debated the best approach because we didn't want to completely eliminate the dining room. We primarily use it as a school-room. So we settled on a design of built-in desks and shelves being configured in such a way that we felt it could still pass as a built-in buffet/hutch.

What designs are you considering? We had fun with our library. Wanted it to fit the rest of the house, but be just a little bit special.

BenTheGoodAg said:

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YouBet said:

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Our more permanent solution is going to convert our dining room into a full blown library / lounge. I can't wait to do this; just collecting design ideas for inspiration right now.

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That's cool. We ended up putting our second set of shelves in the dining room as well (wife calls it the Library Annex ). Debated the best approach because we didn't want to completely eliminate the dining room. We primarily use it as a school-room. So we settled on a design of built-in desks and shelves being configured in such a way that we felt it could still pass as a built-in buffet/hutch.

What designs are you considering? We had fun with our library. Wanted it to fit the rest of the house, but be just a little bit special.

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We are not totally sure yet. I'm just collecting pics of rooms I like. Some won't make any sense for us. It's a challenging room because (1) we live on the coast so the house is coastal in feel. There is no leather or dark wood/colors and (2) the room is an odd shape. It's long and open to the living room.

So, I won't be able to do a more traditional dark and leather library type feel. We could do bookcases for miles in this room so have to figure out how many bookcases we do, the type of furniture, and then how to break it up and create the space so that it flows into the living room yet feels like its own space.

Will likely bring a designer in before it's all said and done

I have no input, but this reminds me of the movie High Fidelity where John Cusack is constantly reorganizing his records in different ways.

Found this today. Minus the windows this is a good idea for our space. It's a fairly close approximation of our room. This see through bookcase lets you divide the space between rooms while keeping it open.

Yeah, I dig that. I like the open style of that front shelf. One of my pet peeves are built-ins that don't go to the ceiling. Kitchen cabinets are consistent offenders. I like how these look and use the space.

Which books get put on that top shelf that no one will ever find a step stool to reach?

AtlAg05 said:

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Which books get put on that top shelf that no one will ever find a step stool to reach?

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As much as my wife's Romantasy as I can fit up there.

I was waiting for that reply.