Handling Your Household Library
12.13.07By Derek DahlsadAs we’ve mentioned before, the Wifey and I read by osmosis. Oh, we do read the traditional way, but owning is that first step to actually acquiring the knowledge bound within the pages 
on our shelves. Organized? Of course not. Here’s how we started: Wifey’s books on one set of shelves, mine on another. Then a couple bookshelves were added, and books were taken out of storage. Then we bought more books. Then we added shelves. Then we rearranged the rooms. Then we added shelves…et cetera, and so forth, and etcetera forth. There IS a rough organization, where general subjects — feminism, sci-fi, business, graphic design — are clumped together, but I couldn’t tell you what we’ve got or where it’s at.
In fact, we recently attended a book sale, a time when knowing what’s already on our shelves would be an asset. See, as frugal shoppers we went on the last day, during the last advertised hour or so. The big local used-book-sellers were lined around the edge, waiting for the quiet signal: after 2:30, the per-book-sale became a bag-sale. The resellers were waiting like vultures for the final gasp of breath, waiting for the last of the readers to pass by the books that final time, so they could swoop in and take the rest away at pennies a copy. Of course, everybody gets grabby pretty quick — so, if we knew what we’d already owned, we wouldn’t have wasted time on yet another copy of Dick Gregory’s From The Back Of The Bus or a James Blish’s Star Trek adaptation that’s not one of the ones I’m missing. Sure, when it works out to two cents a book, it’s not a horrible loss — but where in the world will we put them?
Last year, someone with a similar problem turned to the geek world for help: he asked Slashdot how to best organize and sort his and his wife’s personal library. Once you get past the snark and humor (telling which is which is tough), there’s quite a few good suggestions. The amateur librarian took the best solutions he was given, and applied it to his library. His rules for the home library are as follows:
- It needs to be easy to find a book.
- It needs to be easy to add a book to the system.
- The systems needs to handle foreign language books.
- It needs to be easy to maintain the system going forward.
- The initial cataloging effort can’t take forever.
Ah, if only I could have such high goals! While I’m not Collectors’ Quest’s resident library-expert, it seems that taking cues from modern libraries is the key: use barcodes, organize by tried-and-true structures (the guy above used the Library of Congress’ method), and stick with 
whatever you decide to do. It sounds like the library-questing guy and his wife are primarily non-fiction-readers, which lends well to the LOC method of organization; Dewey Decimal might be best for fiction lovers, or maybe take notes on how Barnes & Noble does their shelving. If you’re a collector of old books, you may be out of luck when it comes to using ISBNs and barcodes to speed along your cataloging. Using software to catalog the books, of course, only matters if you can shelve them in a findable way — invest in good shelves, lest you start stacking and double-rowing your books like we have. Still, the 5 Rules do not rely on ISBNs, Libraries of Congresses, computers, or zebra stripes — it’s a matter of willpower.
Ah, willpower. How much smaller would our collection of books be if we had some willpower? There’s a Catch-22 in that — if we had the willpower to organize, we’d have the willpower to resist buying so many books and have less of a critical need for library organization. Whether or not we own a copy of Catch 22, I couldn’t tell you. Wifey thinks we own somewhere between zero and ten copies, which is a reasonable estimate; one of these days we’ll narrow it down a bit, when we get to cataloging our library.
Gotta Collect? Then You Gotta Connect - Join our Collectors’ Community!
