Sort?

...stick 'em where they fit. When the books exceed the space, there's just no sorting available. It's a treasured conundrum. :D

i've worked in several libraries, so they're alphabetical by author's last name, then usually in series order or release order if they're not the same series. the ones that aren't sci-fi/fantasy are separate, and they are alphabetical too. i'm also sorta ocd, and really want books in the same series to have the same cover art and be all either paperback or hardcover so that they match, but being a college student i sometimes just have to be happy with what i can get a hold of at the time.

While I have books throughout the house and my collection grows slowly, I reached a point where could not add more so I regularly winnow my collection of books I don't anticipate re-reading or sharing to make room. Other than that, I have piles of to-be-read books (mostly in the bedroom), and various shelves for different genres typically grouped by author and series. That is the extent of my system.

By color.

I go for a componation of 'what looks nice' and 'stick 'em where they fit.'
Seriese usually go together because they look better that way, hardbacks have to go on the lower shelves because they don't fit on the higher ones, at all costs skinny books must me but together so they're not over shadowd by big fat volumes. Since there's no real system in place I have to locate books my instinct, but that working fine for the moment.

My fiancee and I did what any couple moving in together would do with a second bedroom--we turned it into a library! We have 8 floor-to-high-ceiling book shelves along two walls in the room (The huge Ikea ones with extenders on top). We are extremely OCD about the collection, making any changes a "we have to sit down and seriously discuss this" situation! ;) With the books we categorize by type & size, then author last name: Paperback novels, paperback classics, hardback large, hardback/paperback medium size. On the opposite wall, we categorize our graphic novels by size, then series titles: Small format (mostly eastern), large format (mostly western), odd sizes (mostly indie), extra-large format (anything!). Along the bottom of both walls we keep all our art and reference books by mostly size, with groupings of similar themes if possible. It's sorta complicated, but not only are we book lovers, we're also artists...so aesthetics are important! ;)

Now THOSE are shelves! ::drool::

Organize? It's a personal aesthetic. There's some books stacked horizontally, some upright vertically, and the groupings are arbitrary for some, and not so at all for others.

The signed titles hang out by themselves; and then there's another shelf devoted to the all-time favourite books I'd basically recommend to anyone, regardless of their usual reading tastes; a shelf for my indulgent favourites--those books that just aren't for everyone but I will constantly be reading and rereading; and a shelf dedicated to books collected but as yet unread. Anything else kind of finds its home in and around the rest, sometimes by genre, sometimes not.

If I really don't like something, I've taken to discarding it--either selling it, donating it or finding someone who's interested in reading that author. I've learned over the years that it's necessary to cull the collection...

I use my closet shelves, which are deep but narrow so I have to double-park my books on some shelves. When I only have one row of books on a shelf it gives me room to keep book-related objects in front of the books (e.g., metals vial for Mistborn, meteorites for science fiction). I always keep books sorted in the series order, although I sometimes keep signed books apart from the others.

I keep them in very good condition by reading them on the Kindle.

Finally, I keep old books (17th-19th century) in their own box because they smell musty.

I'm with Miss Cherie up there. These shelves are organized according to the author's last name except for the bottom shelf. The bottom shelf is mostly the things my husband and I have collected for class or that do not belong to the fantasy, horror, or sci-fi genres. She shelf that is second from the bottom are books that need to be organized but do not have a place yet. My random Star Trek books are among them. Also on the shelves are paraphernalia that often goes with the novels themselves. Brian Lumley's statue of Thibor Rising is featured among his novels. There are other objects as well: a plastic dragon, a FFVII statue of Aeris, a Santa snow glob and several manipulating spheres usually go on the shelves. These are by no means the end of my books. We have two more shelves in the bedroom of straight vampire and horror fiction, as well as our manga and comics section. The books we acquired from the World Horror Convention are also here. The only thing I'm not proud of is that all of our signed books are at our parents houses, as they are safer and kept under glass there.

I did the "by color" thing on one small shelf -- it's surprisingly calming. It's like looking at a lava lamp versus looking at TV "snow".

I sort first by fiction, non-fiction, reference (dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.), manga, comics/graphic novels, and old/rare books. Each of those has their own worksheet in an Excel workbook in which I catalogue by many fields, including Dewey call number. Fiction is all sorted first by main genre (SFF, Horror, etc.) then by author surname. Fiction and non-fiction get broken down into genre, sub-genre, and sub-sub-genre (such as Comedy of Manners > Romance > Regency/Georgian Fiction for Pride and Prejudice). I also try to organize by size. Because I am insane.

As I'm in the midst of cataloguing, everything is piled, but piled in catagorical order. Also, because I have rats who are determined to spend as much time behind the fridge as possible, I have a non-fiction and reference (and a dash of fiction) book fort around my fishtank and fridge:


And then there's the table of non-fiction and reference, comics/graphic novels, manga, and assorted fiction (mostly SFF):


And, last but not least, my actual bookshelf with old/rare books on top and miscellaneous fiction, SFF, and travel books. There're also piles of Romance and Horror on the DVD bookcase to the right:

I tend to separate HC's from PB's- what can I say, I like the look of a full-run of HC's?) After that, I generally try to keep books together by author and then in order of publication/series. From there, it's sort of a fit 'em where I can. Usually depends on what mood I'm in as far as which author I'm digging at the time as to who gets the better location on the shelves.

My "good stuff" is usually displayed most prominently- signed copies, limited editions, first printings. These include my near-perfect run of Robert Jordan First Printings (only missing TEoTW for the Wheel of Time- I have a 3rd printing HC, but it's signed!). My slipcased set of the Revised Edition of The Lord of the Rings (all 1st printing HC's), and my growing collection of all-things Tim Powers.


Hopefully, things will pick up financially for us b/c we would like to buy a house with more room and I can finally get that library I've always wanted...

I like how your Wheel of Time collection starts off paperback, and becomes hard cover around book 9 - mine looked the same, starting at book 10, as I couldn't wait longer for the smaller editions :D
Now I'm re-buying them all in hardcover, to make it take up a shelf all by itself...
Organising?  Only by series and by what will fit where.  A series spanning multiple shelves hurts my brain.  The only other thing is I keep the top shelf for books I haven't read yet.

The guardians of my entryway. :)

Right-hand side is my highly miscellaneous non-fiction shelf
(yes, it's a much smaller unit). It consists largely of my professional books (programming) and college texts that were too useful or interesting to sell back at the end of term. I haven't sorted it yet.

On the left is my fiction. It's sorted by size first out of necessity (the top shelves are spaced closer together so I can get all my MMPBs on there) then alphabetically by author's name, then by series order. Magazines go on top in boxes, and RPG rulebooks have their own section at the bottom right.

Scattered all over both are my various Nerd Trophies. :)

My bookshelf has a section for favorite authors. That has Terry Pratchett, Tad Willliams, Robert Jordan, Brandon Sanderson and a few others. I try to keep those books sorted by series. The rest of the shelves are sort of stick-'em-where-they-fit, as long as I can keep books from the same author together. Mostly it looks like there's very little organization to the whole thing, but I can find what I want when I want it, and that's the most important thing, right?

I sort by format, then try for alphabetical by author (but really need to do some work on the hardcovers. I also keep a separate book case for books by Canadian authors (it was a way to divide up the fiction between the office and the bedroom).

For non fiction, it's a mix of format and topic, with art blending into photography to film to animation to cartooning then to comics to illustration and back to art again...

Also kept in their own bookcase are DVDs and tankoubons

And through several bookcases (and on top of them) are piles of books and magazines: they're my unread stash. Strangely enough it's hard to get it to shrink...

Being a librarian I can't resist going alpha by author last name for all my fiction, which covers 3 walls of my office. Textbooks and research books (and some classic literature) are in a separate area in my office on two bookcases and not in any particular order, just roughly by topic. These get moved around a lot as I'm working on my dissertation right now.

Upstairs all my nonfiction (a lot of cookbooks and my husband's books) are on 2 bookcases, in no special order. And I have one small bookcase by the door dedicated to library books and other books to read soon. Only finished books get to go downstairs to their proper place.

And everything is catalogued on Librarything which I update every few months.

My organizational system is mainly by subgenre and an eclectic personal idea of "what goes where" that bears no resemblance to a sensible system to anyone else. Interestingly, I work in a bookstore and alphabetically shelve books most days of the given week, so I'm not entirely sure why my home shelves aren't sorted as such. (Probably because the shelving is partially size-reliant and double stacked, because 7 shelves are not enough and I'm out of apartment for any more.)

I sort my SFF books in alphabetical order by author but I keep separated those books I've read from those I haven't. Anthologies and collections go after the Z. I've found it useful to have a library software, I use Bookhunter, which is free for MAC. It reads the UPC symbol with the Webcam and searches the Internet for the book information.

I need those shelves, I have filled three, and have no more space. What im doing now is more of and elabrate alphabetical stacking process, seperated into difrent divisions of genre and awesomeness. It looks like a big earthquake hit my house, but there is definetly a defined order to the chaos. When I reorganize it all, I think I actually spilt into multiple personalities, and each one jockies for there favorite books to make it up on the shelf.

But the shelves that really make me look crazy are my DVD's. I have them all in a 6 degrees of seperation type thing where each pecedeing movie has the same actor in it. It looks like chaos but its so very precise. I go nuts if I buy a new movie and it blows the scheme, I have actually bought movies just to fill in holes in it. Thats why I own "The Fast and The Furious", still in the wraper tho.

I don't have shelves at the moment, most of my books are in storage right now. My organization was always partly by theme, partly alphabetical and partly by size (dictated by shelf-spacing). Often the smaller paperbacks ended up being doubly parked on the shelves.

Re-organization always takes place depending on mood, new aqcuisitions and space. I have a shelf Roman/greek writers (in translation), a shelvf medieval/sagas, a shelf mythology, with ancient asian books being placed in these sections as well. Graphic novels stay together, as do cook-books, history books have their own domain, as do pop-science books, sometimes seggregated by field. My small-press books (mostly ps-publishing) have their own section, sff-books are together, or only the to-read ones and some 'classics'. 'Literature' on the shelves tend to be the to-read section. Most other things tended to end up temporarirly in boxes. I will really have to think about a system for my next place.

Nonfiction is generally by category/theme. Fiction by author, although mystery authors tend to congregate together. Paperbacks stacked in front of hardcovers, if I have any by that author. I don't have enough space to not double-, and sometimes triple-stack. Fiction is not alphabetized by author nor by title, although I'll try to keep a series in its chronological order (I'll let you decide if that's by internal or publishing timeline).

I cull periodically either because I realize that I have multiple copies (3+) or I'm not likely to read the book again.

Some photos are at http://melita66.livejournal.com/631.html

I am a professional student and so my books are divided between my parents place and wherever I am living at the particular time. That and the fact my room at home is half filled with my moms stuff I store them in a few deffirent ways. In either a book shelf one which I have at home, a few boxes in my parents garage, and finally a whatever shelf space and the storage bins I have at school with me. But I always organize them by subject, then genre, and lastly series.

I sort by class/genre/sub-genre(where necessary)/author, except that I also separate hardcovers from paperbacks within the genre.

By class I mean fiction/non-fiction. It just wouldn't do to have Limbaugh side-by-side with Lindskold. And no way I mix classic sci-fi with fantasy. I use Ender volumes as a link between the two.

@brentus #8: To keep them in good condition, you read them on the kindle? That's like ensuring the wine's preservation in your cellar by only drinking Scotch. I don't understand. Are you an archivist?

Spine design, size, author, and theme. My mom bought me several IKEA-type shelves that line a long stretch of hallway. I'm looking forward to moving to a new house and custom-built shelves that go from top to bottom. :)

Fiction: Anthologies first, alpha by editor. The rest is more-or-less alpha by author, and includes comics and graphic novels. Poetry and plays are seperate.

Unread nonfiction is alpha by author; read is in a categorical sort. Cookbooks have there own bookcase; so do language books (both dictionaries and other reference books, and books one learning and practicing languages which are not my native language.)

Unread fiction is less organized than it would be if it fit on the shelves. People need to stop writing books faster han I can read them!

I'm a librarian, so I always put a lot of thought into how I order my books. Though, the system is a bit messed up at the moment. I might be re-ordering them again when I've got a week off round Christmas.

My books are sorted by category, SF, Fantasy, Chick lit, Crime, Fiction, non-fiction, children's books and reference and university releated books.
Within the Fantasy and SF cases books are ordered by author and series and how they fit best on the shelves. Chick lit and crime used to be by author, but are now doubled up because I had to make room for more SFF :D Fiction from before 1950 is sorted by publication date/author (ie if I have several books by the same author, it'll go on the shelf by the first publication date I have for that author and the rest chronologically behind it), non-fiction, which is mostly historical goes by date as well. Kids' books by author and how they fit. And reference and study by how they best fit the shelves.



These pics are from January 2009, when we'd just moved in to our house. The shelves are the same, just way more books (I'm double shelving for the first time in my life because we can't fit another book shelf at the moment) so it looks a little more messy :) There's also always two messy shelves where my hubby keeps his D&D books and dice and stuff.

I keep a catalogue of my books using Goodreads, I just enter them by ISBN when they enter the house.

Clearly I need to take some pictures. I've been cataloging them on LibraryThing (and putting them on GoodReads, but I use GR more for everything I read & LT more as a specific catalog).

On Sunday I culled a whole bunch of non-fiction that I just didn't need and reorganized. Now I have one bookshelf of non-fic/reference (cooking, language, philosophy, etc), and two of fiction/religion. I majored in literature, so I've still got a lot of those books. Right now the big one is--anthologies/criticism, British literature (by era & alphabetically by author's last name within an era), American literature (era & alphabetical again), world literature (alphabetically by country, then by author's last name within the country), authorial biography, modern fiction. The smaller bookshelf has religion books (from my minor in college), followed by sci-fi/fantasy, then comic books/graphic novels.

I'd like a fourth bookcase & to be able to sort even more...and to have more, to boot.

Guys, you DO love your books... that's amazing, I can't help but staring at those shelves and stacked books.. I wish I had that many!
Personally, I've been moving a lot in the past 8 years, at least 6 times, and every single time I had to fit my books in different spaces. No I have the space I lack the shelves... someday maybe. Bu some are on the living room shelves, fiction mostly, some I know my friends will look at and want to borrow. =)
Then my favorite ones are on the shelves above my computer (The whole Tolkien Collection, Harry Potter, Indigo series, Space Odyssey and Stephen King) Sorted by author and editions.
My dictionaries have their special spot in the house.
The rest had to go to my closet, it's so fun to look at the book shelves and then girl stuff and then clothes.
Of course I've always taken extreme measures, due to all my movings... every single one of my books has its own plastic cover, so no dust can get to my beloved pages.

I'm currently designing some lovely tetris-shaped shelves... hope to get it done! =)

I currently have no space for such nice shelves as in the photos, so my books are stored in a couple of closets stacked three-deep, plus a few boxes. I've currently sorted my TBR books into those that I'm going to keep, and those I'll be giving away after I've read them. The only good thing about having little free space is that I've got to be really picky about what to keep, so those that stay are the ones I absolutely love:)

When I move out where I can fit in some shelves, I'd like to sort my books by author's last name, except for multi-author series, like my Star Trek novels and others, that will be better sorted by series, and then by publishing date. I've got a bunch of non-fiction books, so those will have to be sorted by theme or something.

I also have some graphic novels and comics, but right now I store them separately in a few of Ultra Pro binders. They're quite large, so I have no idea where I'll put them after I move.

I don't bother cataloguing my books on LT, GR or Excel, I simply have no need for that. I have a notebook with most of the books that I'd like to read listed, so when I get a book I just tick it off as owned, and when I give it away, I strike it off the list. I periodically update it, so I remember very well what books are on my wishlist. It might sound like a lot of work, but it's not, and it works for me very well.

I catalogue everything on LibraryThing, but I also have an Excel spreadsheet that I'm terrible about updating.

We've got 5 bookcases at home: one for the nice-looking stuff up in the living room, another in the basement for textbooks etc., a third mainly for Star Wars and Stek Trek books, and all of the other fantasy/sci-fi squeezed onto the other two. (These last three bookcases are the standard 6-foot kind you can find at Target or Wal-Mart, but we purchased extra shelves so that each case has 6 MMPB-sized shelves, and two HC/TPB-sized shelves at the bottom.) At one point, two sf/f cases were sorted alphabetically by author, but there are now so many books that most of the shelves have been doubled up, with either MMPBs two rows deep, or HCs and TPBs stacked horizontally in front of the MMPBs.

I made my master bedroom into my library...the non-sf goes in a small bookcase in another room. The hardcovers/art books into two large bookcases, the paperbacks lying horizontally and mostly double-stacked on seven smaller bookcases all sorted by author. There's also a shelf of unread books and a shelf of partly read books. I have stickers from my local bookshop on autographed copies. I recently went through a purge cycle and sent off a hundred fifty books to the library and boxed up another two hundred, finding several 'missing' books in the process. I use GoodReads and LibraryThing like RuthX describes. I'm down to only a few hardcovers living on the floor, and feeling pretty good about that.

To expand a bit -- I also use LibraryThing to catalog, partly so I can check my catalog when I'm out and bring home fewer dupes.

When I say fiction is more-or-less alpha by author, the more-or-less has to do with pen names -- do the Toby Bishop books go under B for Bishop or M for Marley, the author's real name, under which she also has several books published? What about S.P. Somtow / Somtow Sucharitkul -- shelve by the name on the spine, or pick one? (I think, in the first case, I shelved by the name on the book, but in the latter, they're all under "Somtow".)

Honestly, I sort by size. My goal is to fit all 150 books I live with (the other several hundred are in storage) into a single 5'x5' bookshelf. That means clever stacking.

I have 40,000 hardcovers, about, and several thousand paperbacks, and a lot of magazines, in a house, and in a closed bookstore--open maybe once a month. I am thinking of cataloging them. Anyone have experience with hand-scanners and software to do that volume of titles (can't possibly type in tens of thousands of ISBNs)?

I read a lot of series, so they're all sorted by series (if that applies), then sorted chronologically by when I read the first book of that series (not release date). It helps me remember how long ago I read Sword of Shannara, for example, which leads to the events of the books, and where I was when I was reading them. Earliest books are on the bottom, and the books grow upward and left-to-right on the shelves... and I need more shelves, because I'm now stacking them vertically on the top shelf. My little library is primarily mass market paperback, in excellent condition because I hate broken spines. People think it's weird to maintain them so well. Am I alone, there, or something?

I've got floor-to-ceiling shelves from IKEA, and try to keep them organized. One bookcase is entirely graphic novels/TPBs, organized alphabetically. Other shelves are Fiction, divided into Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Other; the others are Nonfiction, divided by subject matter where space permits.

I don't alphabetize, but I do keep authors' works together, and try to keep related authors near each other. Jordan, Pratchett and King have their own shelves just because there's so much of them.

Also, having dissimilar editions of a series really bugs me. For Wheel of Time, some are American mass-markets, others are the Orbit paperbacks (with the far superior cover design) and the last four are 1st edition hardcovers. The bookshelf looks uneven and generally gets on my nerves. If/When TOR releases a Special Complete Edition of the series, you'll probably get my money....

I have completely separate shelves for read and unread, with a few shelves/piles of "must read next haha".

I separate fiction from non-fiction, break non-fiction down into subject areas, and fiction into "regular", fantasy/SF, graphic, and children's . Everything is alphabetical by author at that point except for art/music or large format books which just get squeezed in somewhere in a pretense of aesthetic values.

Where I have a lot of a particular author, they get their own shelf/shelves separate from the alphabetic listing. The bookshelves shown above represent about half my collection, and you can't see the stacks of books on top, or the additional rows of duplicates and alternate editions at the back of each shelf.

With just under 8,000 volumes of SF kept in "my room", I'm now triple-shelving where I can.

Bookshelves? Who needs bookshelves :^D

I've been a Kindler since the first Kindle was released. I keep all of my over 1,000 books on my Kindle device, organized in to collections with Author Name: Series Name for most. For all of the lovely free eBooks that catch my attention, I have Unread Free Books and Read Free Books collections.

When I owned paperbacks, I organized alphabetically within categories--Sci-Fi, Romance, Action/Adventure...

Once in a while my books tend toward alphabeticity, then I get more and they get put in any available space.
I have started keeping the rare ones that I re-read separately. In order to save space I also got a Kindle. It is great and as I find ebooks that I have in hardcopy, I sell, or give away the hard copy.
5 - 4 ft x 7 foot book cases (one just cook books), 3 - 3ft x 6ft book cases and one wall with standard mounted shelves, 8ft hig x 20 ft long and I still need more room.

Into sff/other fiction/non-fic then by SIZE then by first author (or first editor if no main author) then series then order within series. Size is important, it allows for more useful shelf spacing.

My sister hooked me on organizing by color. Sure series get spread all over the place, but the aesthetic is sooo much more pleasing. Plus, if you love your books like I do, you still know exactly where to find everything.

On the built-in shelves in the family room, the books are shelved by author and by series. The bookshelves in the parlor hold signed leather bound first editions and vintage books. The four bookshelves upstairs in the den are a hodge podge of every thing and every where. Alphabetically? Yeah, right! In my dreams! But it does make for an interesting dilema when it's time to pick the next book/series to read!

When we moved into a new place a couple of years back, we turned the 'formal dining room' into a library. This is a photo of the sorting in progress, with more shelves and books not shown. Well, grouping by author would be a more appropriate way to put it. These shelves have now overflowed onto the floor, and I'm considering a stretch of shelves along the high wall (thanks to the vaulted ceiling).

My initial sort is by subject matter, i.e. English historical fiction. Then they are arranged by chronological period (Henry VII, Henry VIII, etc.) Fantasy fiction is separate as is non-fiction. And of course there is one shelf alone to hold the Wheel of Time. Interestingly (and without planning,) there is room for exactly one more book on that shelf.

When I organize mine, they are thematic, then alphabetical by author. I have signed books and books with remarkably silly titles separated out into special collections.

My roommate and I once organized the romance novels and books desperately pretending not to be romance novels according to arbitrarily decided levels of smuttiness.

Mine are arranged stratigraphically by order of purchase and by where they fit on the shelves...except the Neil Gaiman section. Those are in a shelf of their very own.

My books are arranged in two main shelves: fiction by author (alpha) and non-fiction by author (alpha). ANd then Iain (M.) Banks gets a whole shelf of his own since he is so absurdly prolific - these are filed by size and release date. Anthologies are filed in with the other books, alphabetically under the anthology title, since that's how they are filed in my head. I have to do a little bit of vertical/horizontal intermix on the fiction shelf, since there are a combination of sizes that don't always fit. And I have a few "to read" piles - one for library books (three cheers for libraries!) and one for new stuff I've bought, or borrowed from friends.
When we moved into our current little flat, I had to pack up a whole shelf's-worth of books and put them in storage (but my husband probably got the worse end of the bargain - he had to put 7000 LPs into storage!).
But he's promised me that when we buy a house, he will make me a library room that is completely lined with bookshelves, even over the (secret) door. :-)

Enclosed with three walls of IKEA floor to ceiling shelves, all categories of fiction are organized by author and series. Non-fiction to organized by subject. And two shelves are only used for the references material of my current writing project(s). As for tracking, FileMaker is the software of choice.

Two bookshelves.

My Wheel of Time books have their own shelf at the top, with tech books, old LPs, and a printer.

Another bookshelf has CDs and DVDs in its top shelf, with the nonfiction books taking up the rest of the shelves.

There are about 2500 books in our collection, of which 1000 are SF. So first it is by hers and mine, then type (history, mystery, SF etc.) then alphabetical by author and then alphabetical by title (although series are in the order of publication). I try to keep it all organized using the collectorz.com book catalog program which has an associated iPhone app that lets me know what I already have when I visit bookstores. The view shows about half of the shelving.

While I don't have nearly so many books as some, I still don't have nearly enough shelf space, so I have to make some concessions to physics. The top shelf of my main bookcase has mass market paperbacks stacked two rows high AND two rows deep, sorted alpha by author. Below those are hardcover and trade PB fiction, same sorting, and then some nonfiction. Then there's a smaller case with (by category) programming books, roleplaying books, TV- and film-related, general humor, comic strip collections, and music. Other than that, a bunch of books stashed wherever I could find room.

I also worked as a shelver in public and academic libraries for several years, so I couldn't just leave everything haphazard.

the gf and i could never agree on an author/genre/hardcover/softcover/mass market/comic book/art book set up in our built in so we just went by color. haha

I don't have any pics of mine at the moment. I try and keep all books by an author togeather but it's mostly just whereever they fit.

Here's some pics of other peoples
http://bookshelfporn.com/

At the moment our books are all over the place, as we have exactly one bookshelf for several thousand books (with thousands more in storage). When they are all shelved and organized in our home library (as is my dream), it will be as follows:

Nonfiction> Genre (ie Art, Arthurian, History, etc., in alphabetical order)> Sub-genre if applicable (ie Art is arranged by era, History ditto)> Sub-sub-genre if applicable (History being organized into specific topics such as War)> Specific Topics (American Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean War, Viet Nam War, for example, within War)> Even more specific topics> Alphabetically by Author's Surname

(So an example would be a book about the Holocaust would be in Non-fiction> History> War> WWII> Holocaust>Author's Name)

Fiction is arranged similarly, first alphabetically by genre, then by author, with series going before single titles.

Oh, and things like Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, and such are not in Sci-Fi. They are in TV and Movie Related Works.

I catalog by genre. Then by author. I try to get books in any given series in the same size. I think we have book shelves in nearly every room, and books that are pertinent to the activity in those rooms are in there, ie: Research material in Bob's office, Art/Design books in mine, general interest in the family room, Large art books on the coffee table, where else, poetry/philosophy in the bedroom along with the To Be Read shelf, which is groaning!

Each shelf or shelves, depending on the genre, is specific. (Majority is fiction and Science Fiction/Fantasy)

I like to leave a couple of shelves in the family room for pictures and objects, just to break it up visually. I'd post a picture here, if I knew how. Sorry.

"Sort"? I wish!

Step 1: Put them where they fit on the shelves
Step 2: Lay more books (horizontally) on top of those.
Step 3: Put more books in front of them.
Step 4: See Step 2.
Step 5: Oh, hey, I can hang a couple racks on either side of the door!
Step 6: ... Crap, now what? Oh, I know, I'll grab a box and start filling it!
Step 7: Stack boxes in closet.
Step 8: Stack boxes in front of book case.
Step 9: Slip a couple of boxes under the desk.
Step 10: Stack boxes ON the desk.
Step 10.1: Try to put boxes under bed, and realize they simply won't fit.
Step 10.2: Seriously consider just lifting the bed and resting the frame on top of the boxes.
Step 10.3: Decide that's way too much work if I ever want to get at those boxes.
Step 11: ... I don't really need all these clothes in that half of the closet...
Step 12: Build some big shelves in basement
Step 13: Reclaim closet, floor, and desk for non-book stuff
Step 14: Realize there's still room left in the basement, get some more boxes, and clean up shelves.
Step 15: Go back to Step 2.

Occasionally I'll go through and clean out my collection and regretfully donate some books I figure there's no way I'll ever read again to a local school or library or something, but that's really just a stopgap measure.

About the only real organizing I do is keeping series (more or less) together. I've got one bookcase devoted to Star Trek (with the leftovers sharing shelfspace with Discworld... it's a HUGE shelf, so there's still plenty of room left), one of the racks on my door has my entire BattleTech collection, etc. Star Wars is a bit scattered in 3-4 locations, Pern's the same way... my real problem is when a series starts out in paperback, gets really popular, and then starts coming out in hardcover (or I come to a series late and pick up the first several books in PB, 'cause they're cheap and available)... and I start getting twitchy and unable to decide if I want to wait several more months for the latest to come out in PB, or just get the HC and split my collection into two ('cause my system in no way works if I start mixing PB and HC...). I've tried to at least get the boxes in some kind of alphabetical-by-author order, but it's not all that successful. Fortunately, I don't very often say "Oh, I want to read *specific book*!" so I can mostly just grab a box at random and see what's there.

Now that I'm starting to get ebooks, I might be able to start reclaiming my place... I'm about halfway through Step 7, Round 2.

What a fun thread! I'm glad to know I'm not the only OCD geek out there. :-)

My two main divisions are obviously Fiction/Nonfiction. Within fiction, I have SF and Fantasy each on their own shelves, organized by author surname. Another shelf with what little "other" fiction I have, also by surname.

Star Wars gets its own section. Partly because I have so many of them, and also because there are so many authors participating. They are organized chronologically (in universe :-) ).

I had to put my large-format books in the entertainment center. They include Star Wars and Tolkien pictorials, as well as nature and astronomy photo books. Music books (sheet music) are given their own shelf near the instruments, organized by composer surname.

RPG books are on the bookcase in the dining room above the board games. All the D&D is together, grouped first by edition, then by core rulebooks vs. extension, then by publication date. That's also the case where I keep my comic collections and general humor (C&H, Dilbert, Dave Barry, etc.) sorted by author surname.

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The nonfiction is where I depart from the "author surname" rule. I have them sorted from "more basic" to "more specific," with some branching for different subjects.

For example:
Language (dictionary, grammar and style guides, foreign languages...)
Civics (Plato's Republic, The Constitution, The Federalist Papers, ...)
History (sorted chronologically)
Math (geometry, algebra, calculus, differential equations, numerical analysis...)
Science (astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology...)
Mechanical engineering (statics, dynamics, materials, fluids, thermodynamics...)
Electrical engineering (electromagnetics, circuits, signals, controls, digital logic, semiconductor physics...)
DIY and how-to (gardening, woodworking, home repair, cooking...)

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Finally, I have a small case beside my desk where "new" books are temporarily stored until they can be cleaned (I buy a lot of used books; many of them have not been well cared for) and sorted. That's also where I put duplicates that are (freely) available for loaning out. (I don't casually lend my only copy of a book.)

Someday I'll have a nice, big home library with enough space for all of my books in one room. No really, I will! I'll probably even get serious about cataloging them.

I organize my books by Sci-fi/Fantasy and Other fiction/non-fiction. Beyond that I also have my books alphabetized by author's name, starting with last name with the occasional title thrown in where there are no definitive authors, like "American Short Storries" or "Opera Stories" both with many authors in the same book. I also try to keep obvious serieses together where there are many authors writing in the same subject, like Star Wars, and in that case I try to organize those books by timeline of the story. It looks like this (bless IKEA):

I also have an overflow, that I keep expanding and eventually will get to the same level of organization as above. It looks like this right now:

...I also have some boxes filled, but I'm not very happy about that, just like the double stacking of my books on the overflow selves, because I like to be able to easily reach all my books or just look at them...

We have five 7-foot shelves in the living room and another seven downstairs which are all mostly double-shelved. And still boxes to be unpacked. Much of our non-fiction is upstairs divided between the two offices (my wife's and mine). We have five bookshelves in my office--we got rid of about 5K books before we moved to Vancouver.Arranged? You've got to be kidding. I'm hoping to just get them all unpacked within the next year or so. Dave H: let me know how that handscanner idea works out...
Did I mention the three seven-foot shelves of LPs? Or the six 7-foot-tall DVD/Blu-Ray/CD shelves? Argh. This collecting is getting to be a headache! Oh, and the cookbooks in the dining room, and the...

Holy cow - I wish I had space for all those bookshelves! I've had to bookcross a lot of books because I just don't have room anymore :(. My brother has recently moved out so I've taken over some of his cupboard space for my books - specifically the anthologies and multiple-title books (i.e. the first three Mercy Thompson books). I do prefer to have them more accessable so that I can just glance at my shelves and pick what I feel like reading.

I do alphabetically by author then by series timeline within that. Finally I organise the books in a series in their proper order.

I used to use BookCollector but I just haven't been bothered to do so for a while. I probably should....

I have a simple narrow bookcase which goes from floor to ceiling. I arrange the books by how much I want them noticed, and then in height order.

The bottom two shelves have the trashy fantasy and children's books I just can't bring myself to part with but don't want many people to see.

Third from the bottom is the shelf with Wheel of Time books 1 to 12, with space for 13 and 14 in paperback.

The Discworld books would never fit into one shelf, but a third of them are always lent out so they fit. I also keep the list of lent out books with names, dates and addresses of the borrowers there too.

Above that is a shelf of biographies. The top two shelves have average fiction and non-fiction books.

The third shelf which is at eye level, has all the classic and award wining books I want everyone to know I’ve read. I do make it a rule however, to read and like every book I put there, otherwise it would be too snobby.

Ours are organized by our own loose definitions of genre: canon literature, general lit, SFF (the bulk of the collection), and non fiction. The non fiction is broken down into history, religious/spiritual texts, health, and general reference. Odd sized or coffee-table books have their own shelf, regardless of content or genre.

Inside each genre, the books are organized by author's last name. This system works pretty well for me, but authors who write both fiction and non fiction have their works scattered across different shelves, which makes me a little twitchy.

I also have most of my professional-type books separate, in another room.

A picture from earlier this year:

Seriously? The Library is my organizational tool. I get new/old releases or read through a series and return them. The only SF/Fantasy books I have saved are in one file-size box and I can get them out and read them if I want to reread.

Saves money, time and space for me. Libraries ROCK!

Mine are sort of organised. They are in author groups and then series groups as a sub category. Mostly though they just sit somewhere on a shelf where they fit in :D

Wow, I'm awed by all the pictures people sent in. I wish I had huge shelves of books, but I haven't had a job in ages, so I get most of my reading material from the library. I do have one small shelf that's part of my desk, which is filled with SF/F books, and a CPR manual.

I arrange my books by genre, and then by author. I also try to put same-size books next to each other, and larger books at one end, and midgets at the other end.

Ive been giving all my books away lately. I'm holding on to my R.Jordan, G.R.R.Martin, and G. Cook, simply so that I can keep loaning them out to turn people on to those authors. I dont re-read many books, but the main reason is that I'm pretty much 100% digital these days. The only real exceptions are books like Towers of Midnight, where there was no ebook available. Between kindle and the 2 books/month I get from audible.com my new bookshelf is probably going to be a collection of USB drives.

I use Excel to cataloge my library too! (I'm terrible at Access. It all *used* to be in dBase III on a DEC Rainbow, and on 3x5 cards before that.) I have just over 3300 volumes, which I see fromt he preceeding is just amateur country.

I have bookcases for PB mystery, PB SF/Fantasy, HC mystery/SF (they all fit in one bookcase), and the whole dining room is nonfiction and non-genre fiction. Fiction is alpha by author (PB are double-shelved, just for space considerations); nonfiction is roughly by subject (history, biography, general science, engineering...) and then alpha by author *or* chronologically. (There's a Civil War shelf, a Lincoln shelf, one for Churhill, one for FDR...). I'm still organizing the nonfiction -- I've only been in this apartment for a year.

Being old, I shun and eschew Kindles and all their ilk. ;)

I still live at my mom's, so my space is limited to my bedroom. I started going to used booksales to support the librarys in my area last summer. Since then I have added around 1000 books to my collection, which previously was only Star Wars books. So now I have added 3 5-shelf bookcases to my room. I have one pretty much devoted to hardcover, but I avoid buying those because they take up too much room. Unfortunately, there are some very good new series out lately that I'm simply not going to wait for paperback form. The other two are devoted to paperbacks, all stacked two deep, and some shelves are spaced far enough to include a second double row on top. Then books start getting stuck laying down on top of those rows. Finally, all my newest books are on the floor in front of my dresser, stacked a foot deep, 2 feet tall, and 5 feet long.

As far as sorting, I took them all down about a year ago and rearranged them (that was a fun few hours, seriously) by author and series. The ones on the floor haven't kept up with that though. I also read alot of multi author series and I keep those together. I have a section for star wars, one for Dragonlance, and one quadruple row shelf for Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Warhammer, 40K, and all those kind. Sort of like a bookstore. Then, in front of one of the booksleves I have a huge 80 gal tupperware tub with the books I've read. Everything in my room outside that tub I haven't even gotten to read yet.

I have a Sony Reader, but I only use it to hold my booklists for when I go to booksales, I'd hate to buy the same book several times so I started a list in Word. It follows outline form by author, then series, the book, indented at each new level. At size 11 font it is currently 60 pages exactly.

I had my 120-odd books sorted alphabetically by author, series and then title when I had a bookshelf. Waiting for the day that I a. reconnect with my stored books; and b. get an e-reader. :)

My SF collections started about half a century ago, and has now reached 3,357 books. Most are paperbacks, some hardbacks, and some eBooks. The real books live on a set of Ikea bookshelves, two deep, and in alphabetical order by auther surname, with books too large to fit on the shelves arranged (also in alphabetical order) along the top.
I wrote a program in VB (with an SQLite database) to hold my catalogue, and it is kept strictly up to date when I acquire new books, which is how I know exactly how many I have.
These days, I only buy eBooks, and my reading is now done on my phone - an HTC Advantage - which currently has nearly 600 books on it. Real books seem pretty clumsy in comparison!

I sort mine autobiographically. From the earliest to the most recent. That way I create a timeline of my own reading and thinking. I also get a feeling for my own phases (Orson Scott Card phase, Mars phase, post-apocalyptic phase, Blue phase....)
There's lost of embarassing material between in my junior high to high school area, but that's the whole point.

jrfair3 @ 54 - Thanks for the tip on collectorz.com! What a cool app and something I've always needed but didn't know it. I love to browse the used book sections of thrift stores and library sales, but sometimes I end up buying duplicates. How great to have my own library catalog that I can carry in my iPhone. Thanks!

I file by connection.

For me, the organization is centered around Robert Heinlein. His multiverse touches just about everything of value. Leading into the Heinlein is Doc Smith's Lensman, and leading into that is Babylon 5 (whose Techno-mages bear a striking resembelance...) Following Heinlein is Known Space (and the rest of Niven).

Stuck in at the tail of the Niven is Buck Rogers, off the trilogy written off of the outline by Niven and Pournelle, as well as Pournelle's own works, as well as those of Niven's other co-authors.

This is followed by Burroughs' Barsoom and the rest of his works through their interconnectedness, followed by Farmer's Wold Newton works and the rest of Farmer. Wold Newton leads us to Haggard, James Bond, Doc Savage, The Avenger, The Spider, Sherlock Holmes, a few more that I'm forgetting as the bookshelf is not in sight of the computer.

This is followed by a miscellaney of other authors, arranged by some inner sense of similarity of style, content, or vibe.

personally, i put them where they fit by series, if it does not fit, then i get to rearrange all of it to somewhere it does. Unfortunatly i cant amass a large array of books like you obviously have, so i have to make do with what room i get

Shelf for fantasy/sci-fi, with the Wheel of Time having its own special place of honor, shelf for other books I like, and shelf for "classics" (Dickens, Bronte, Shakespeare). And also the books that don't fit on my one small lonely bookshelf :(

One day I'm getting a library! :D

Let's see... Main divisions: gaming books; cartoon books; textbooks; everything else. Inside those: gaming books sort of by game system but I haven't actually sorted them in quite a while. Cartoon books have Large, Paperback, and In-Between/Garfield-Size. And Everything Else has Really Oversized, Hardback/Trade Paperback, and Mass Market Paperback.

Then inside those, cartoon books are sorted by the name of the cartoon, and Everything Else is sorted alphabetically by author, then by title and/or series inside an author, and also by whether I've read it yet at all or not. The piles of "have not yet read" are alphabetized on the floor for stuff older than, say, four or five years ago, and the newest is in piles that I Know Where They Are, which works because I'm the only one living here. And a lot of the mass-market paperbacks are in cardboard boxes.

Dave, carefully not specifying the magazine-collection structures

When I planned to move back in with my parents, I selected two bookcases that I knew would fit in their house and only allowed myself to take what would fit. The bottom two shelves of one case are for my kids' books, mostly picture books. I admit that I moved some overflow from those shelves to my parents' library. Next shelf up is gaming books. I try to have all my Sharon Lee/Steve Miller books together. Everything is cataloged in LibraryThing, including the 7 boxes of books I left in storage at my old house. If I recall, a lot of the stored books were my late husband's books that I thought the kids might be interested in later, as well as a lot of gaming books. Then, I sold almost $1000 worth of books to Powell's. Ideally, I would sort between nonfiction and fiction, and fiction by author, nonfiction by topic.

Oh my goodness! I have 4 bookshelves, 6'x3'. And I am wondering how I am going to fit a fifth. Maybe I will take pictures when I get home and upload them.
I am SO GLAD I am not the only one who keeps all their books, I was beginning to worry that I might have hoarding tendencies.