What is the best way, in your opinion, to organize a book collection?

oooohhh I love books….Mine are actually randomly organized based on the aesthetics of the book shelf(/ves). I like my shelf to have some character, so I play around with the sizes until it looks good to me. I also know exactly where every book is, so I don’t need to depend on alphabetization too much

Mine are alphabetical by author and then in each authors section the are alphabetically ordered by title. As far as “a” and “the” i put the “a”‘s in the A section but i ignore “the”.

I dont depend on the alphabetizing to find a book.it just looks better i think.

I suppose the bigger the collection the more formal you need to get. I have mine organized primarily by genre. The most interesting ones get shelf space in the living room. Books that I want to read or reread are mixed on one shelf (a la GTD read list), plus I have another stack by the bed.

Not to contradict uberbatman, but generally articles aren’t used for alpha order. A Farewell to Arms would go under “F”, and The Outsiders would go under “O”.

My books aren’t organized at all, but if I were to organize them I’d do it alphabetically by the last name of the author.

@ kevbo – I judge people by the books they show off in their living room ;}

I actually like to do it by color, weird perhaps.

@ nocountry, let’s see… Palaniuk, Solshenitsyn, some classics, Ginsberg’s collected poems, Hemingway’s bio, and a few travel books.

@peedub
That is a common thing to do. I do it too.

@JP- Didn’t know that, nice pics.

I organise mine by series then height, and shelves in order of preference. Well, books in a series are usually the same height which is good but when they’re not it really annoys me. I’ve got my favourites on the mantel piece in series and height order, next favourites on the top shelf of my bookcase and so on until the second bottom shelf then on the bottom shelf is all the large picture or information books.

Dewey decimal system.

When you’re in the mood for a book, what do you think about first?

I’d like a scf-fi book?
I want a Stephen King book.
I’m in the mood for “The Stand”.

Whatever your first inclination is most of the time is how you should organize your collection. For most people, it would probably be by genre then title.

Color!

My household organizes by section and depending on the section we change the organization. Our science section is organized by topic, whereas our sci-fi/fantasy room is organized by author.

omg delirium I am going to come to your house and read all your books! Anyone else have a fantasy of having a huge book-room like in Beauty and the Beast??

hahaha. My dream house includes that too. My actual house is filled with thousands and thousands of books. 8 foot bookshelves on every wall. It was the perfect environment to grow up in. I read everything within reach in the fiction room by fourth grade. I remember loving Shakespeare but hating his sonnets. I didn’t understand poetry so well. Going back and rereading them was funny because I had only gathered the stories the first time and had totally missed all the humor and more sophisticated allusions. I used to sit on my parents’ bedroom floor with a book and a dictionary for a whole day.

Sorry…... Got memory lane-ing and rambly. Heh.

I organize my bookshelves by first whether I have read them or not, then by the type of book: Sci-Fi, non-fiction, fantasy, romance, etc. Then, I usually order them by ranking – the books I loved the most will be at the top of the shelf because I have a tendency to re-read books not matter how many I have on my “To-Read” shelf.