How organized is your personal/homeschool library...

[Sue G in PA]

We're out of shelf space. Thanks for the creative ideas on how to make more/make the most of my space. So, how organized is your library? Do you:

1. Throw the books on the shelf willy-nilly, not really caring the order they are in?
2. Put them on the shelf neatly (size order, etc.) but not in any particular order/subject area?
3. Organize by subject? By reading level? Both?
4. Take the time to actually keep a written list of the books you own? :eek:
5. Other way of organizing?

Where do you keep YOUR books...the books you are reading for fun or self-improvement or homeschool helps, etc.?

Me? Personal books are in my room covering my bureau and chest of drawers. Kids books/homeschool books: I have some "baskets/boxes" of books organized by reading level (pre-readers/early readers, early chapter books/more advance readers, etc.). THe other books are neatly on the shelf but not in any order (YET!). I want to organize by subject area (science, history, literature classics, storybooks, etc.) AND my big project...making a list of all the books we own :eek:

Can we say...NESTING :D

[JennifersLost]

Mine are in order by subject and I have a history shelf that's roughly in chronological order. I have separate bookshelves for the kids' books we're not currently using, but some of them migrate onto the main bookshelf when the kids get into them on their own.

Every once in awhile I sort it all out again. I'm just glad they're all out of the boxes, finally!

[Jean in Newcastle]

Well, originally they were organized by subject matter. And many of them still are - the ones the kids can't reach! The kid's books are thrown willy-nilly on the shelf and sometimes they don't even make the shelf (though I make them tidy them a tiny bit).

[Mrs Mungo]

All of our non-fiction books are organized by subject. At one time all of *my* fiction books (I own a lot) were in choronological order. They aren't right now, I haven't had time to organize those yet. Then the kids' fiction books are together (paper backs stacked two deep) and the "little kid" books are all together on their own bookshelf.

[Dana in OR]

By size and subject. I keep a separate bookcase for science books. I keep a separate bookcase for oversize/picture books. I keep a separate bookcase for beginning chapter - regular novel size books. In part my system is dictated by the size of bookcase/shelves that I have available.

As for *my* books, I have a large 4-shelf bookcase that has glass doors. I keep my books in alphabetical order by author. I keep a section of the bottom shelf for the few cookbooks that I own. I have several other places in the house where I stash my books but my main bookcase is where I concentrate my organizational activity. Books regularly get rotated out to be given away to others or traded in for other books that are more pressing. It is not uncommon for me to read a book, fall in love with it, and immediately mail it to my mother. Then I find another copy eventually in a thrift shop and replace it in my own collection.

LOL. I am a bit fanatical about it. I have even alphabetized my children's books in at least some of their bookcases. LOL again. I must have a touch of OCD.

[Mekanamom]

They are mostly organized by subject.

But some books just are too big or heavy to go with similar books, and they go on "The Heavy or Oversized" book shelf. Which is how The Complete Illustrated Shakespeare ended up rubbing shoulders with Total Hockey, and Leonardo Da Vinci ended up next to The Secret Language of Birthdays. :rolleyes:

How are you going to organize your list?

Hee hee... happy nesting!!

[RoughCollie]

Our homeschool library and my personal library are organized by subject.

DH has about 5,000 books, and his are not organized at all. He doesn't care about that. He pretty much knows where every book is located.

[RoughCollie]

x Sorry, double post.

[Eliana]

I have all our books cataloged using :
http://www.collectorz.com/book/

I tried trial versions of a number of software programs and this was the easiest to use and the most versatile. (Though I recommend downloading the trial version first to make sure it works well for *you*.)

Our books are all roughly sorted:

Kids' chapter books (fiction): multiple shelves in the library
Kids' history: one floor to ceiling shelf in the the library
Kids' Science: ditto
kids' biographies: a single shelf on one of the chapter book shelves
kids' myths & legends and retelling of literary works: ditto
picture books and easy readers are overflowing from one large booksheld in the playroom
reference books: a large shelf in the entryway and a smaller shelf in the library

Art books: f-t-c shelf in the living room, with the kids' books (including music/musician books) on the bottom shelf
Judiaca: 3 f-t-c shelves in the living room (including kids')
school books/textbooks: two tall shelves in the dining room
poetry: lg bkshelf in the living room

The Literature, general (adult) fiction (genre & vanilla), history, popular science, essays, short stories, restricted YA books, medical, exercise, and homeschool reference all live in our bedroom roughly sorted onto 4 f-t-c shelves.

When my husband is working from home, he has a full bookshelf for his programming books... one of the few reasons I can think of for preferring him working out of the house!

The kids each have their own collections in their rooms (my eldest daughter has hers alphabetically by author, and maintains her little library with great care - she keeps trying to convince me that we should get our family library more organized...)


We've found that rough sorting is the best balance between being able to find things as easily as possible and making the books as accessible as possible to all the kids without making book reshelving something *I* had to be the one to do all the time.

I have colored tape on the spines of the history and science books, a B in permanent marker on the biographies, but other than that all the kids (even my twins when they were quite young) can do a reasonably accurate job of reshelving the books they get out.


Someday my literature and poetry and art books can be alphabetically sorted again.... but for right now I'd rather have them being well used!

Eliana

[nestof3]

We have one tall shelf with American History organized chronologically with general resources at the beginning.

Another tall one with World History (organized in same manner) with the bottom shelf for government.

Life science books (except human body b/c there's no room) are on four short shelving units along one wall. They are organized in taxonomic order.

Earth science, physical science and human body are on two tall shelves. Other subjects are organized likewise. Math and language arts are in a cabinet unit.

The young boys have audio books and picture books in their room. I have scrapbooking, homeschooling and parenting/marriage books in my room. Nutrition and cookbooks are in the kitchen.

[Beth in Central TX]

Our school room has a built-in bookshelf all along one wall, and there are two more bookshelves on the other wall. I arrange the books mostly by subject, but some of the classical books I want the boys to read are organized by grade level. I use Book Collector software to keep track of the books I own. I resorted to this when I kept buying books I already owned.

[Cathy in IL]

Our school books are organized by subject and grade level. History books are mostly chronological. Picture books are organized loosely by alphabetical order - all the A's first etc. - with a colored piece of tape and letter on each book. This way I can tell at a glance if they are organized. My 6 year old is in charge of putting the picture books back in the right spot on the shelf. I figure it helps her develop her alphabetizing skills.

[Tutor]

you might want to look at Library Thing. It's a great place to keep track of the books you own, and you can categorize them using tags based on how you decide to organize them at home. It's also fun because you can see how many other users have the same books that you do, get book recommendations, and some other cool thing bibliophiles truly find exciting and fun. :)

Our books are very basically organized, but we'd like to organize them better. All of our homeschool reference and text books are on one set of shelves organized by subject. Our children's fiction is divided between the kids' rooms based on which child is currently reading a certain book or the reading levels of each child. The rest of our books are organized by subject. Dh separated the fiction into three categories by author: American, British, International. One day we'll have time and enough shelves to organize more anal-retentively, but this will have to do for now. :D

[dangermom]

Mine are organized in bits all over the house, according to a rather idiosyncratic system. On my largest wall I keep literature, history, poetry, book sets, and a bunch of other miscellaneous subjects. My husband has a shelf each for chess and science. The religion books are in the living room, plus the library shelves. The schoolroom has my own collection of children's lit, folk/fairy tales, and children's poetry, plus SF/fantasy/mysteries, random stuff like my books from library school and Christmas books and so on. The homeschooling books are by subject on their own shelves. The kids' bookshelf has the top two shelves for older books, the middle shelf for nice large books (D'Aulaires, nursery rhymes, whatever), the next one for board books, and the bottom shelf for picture books.

My special current books live on our headboard, which is a bookshelf.

[Amy in Orlando]

Our books get worse with each year the boys get older. I"m looking at Library Thing. As it stands, we have a couple shelves dedicated to the following subjects, beyond that, they aren't very organized: History, Science (with shelves for Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy and Misc), Fiction for the young (under 4th grade), Fiction for the young teen (under 8th grade), Fun Fiction (all ages), Classical Fiction (not that this is not fun lol), Non fiction, roughly by subject, Reference books in the following categories (history, science, math, Latin, other languages, general interest).

My plan, this summer, is to get this all under control ... but :::sigh::: I say that every summer.

[Peek a Boo]

mostly by subject, but I'm holding out to TOTALLY organize till dh gets more shelves up. i still have a LOT of books in boxes and it's driving me crazy!

[prairiegirl]

I organize by subject. Each shelf is a subject. You can easily see which subject I like more. The history shelf is groaning from the weight of all of those books. :)

Julia
mom of 3 (8,7,5)

[Mrs. Readsalot]

All of our book are in order like a library. I have nearly 3000 books and they are all listed on The Library thing so I guess I have a list. I have at least 20 bookselves in the house, several are rather large, all are sturdy. My family joes that I can find any book that we own in 10 seconds. They like to test me on this.

[mrscopterdoc]

Wow I must be the most disorganized person here!:D

DD's books are on a bookshelf in her room. Big books are on the bottom. LOL

School books are in the school room. Reference on the bottom, ones we are using currently in the middle and next years up top. Regular books are on another book shelf, just placed helter skelter big hard backs on bottom, paperbacks up top. Cook books in the dining room. No list, no alphabetical order or anything.

[8FillTheHeart]

We own a lot of books (about 6 large bookshelves worth). I have them organized in a way that works for me. :)

All of the science books are together (including field guides, orienteering, etc in addition to science texts, whole books etc)

All of my Landmarks are together even though some are world, American, etc. I have them grouped within themselves.

I have my history organized by how I use them when teaching. I have spines and correlating historical fiction together by ancients, middle ages, etc. Again, I have them organized within the group. All non-fiction to the left of the category with the supplementary reading (mixture of historical fiction, biographies,etc) organized chronologically to the right. A lot of the books have little bookmarks sticking out the top with the yrs they cover written on the top.

I reserve the bottom shelves for picture books, Dr Suess, and I Can Read type books......the little ones are allowed to pull them off and put them away. The shelves right above those are for simply books that we enjoy reading (like Twenty-One Balloons, Princess and the Goblin, etc). These are not organized in any particular way. It probably sounds silly, but the spines' looks are imprinted on my brain and I can scan through them quickly to pull out the titles I want. :)

[DollyM]

DS is in 9th grade this year. It's March.
Yesterday, I discovered a Rubbermaid TUB of books, neatly labeled, "JESSE 9th GRADE HISTORY", stored in my attic.

My available shelves are woefully inadequate to store all of our books. For years I have stored "out of season" books in the attic, rotating sets of books in/out of the house. Clearly, this is not really working for us.

[Sue G in PA]

I must get.more.bookshelves! My method just isn't working. I cleared off one tall bookshelf w/ all my scrapbooking and personal books to fit more of our school books. So now....WHERE do I put all MY stuff? :confused: Or laundry room/office has potential to be the "book room/school room", but needs serious re-organization and clearning out...all of which must wait until this baby is born. Have I told you all...I don't LIKE waiting? :D I put a dent in this room yesterday, and I'm suffering today (very sore from the standing and bending and such). I'm looking into library thing and more shelving units (perhaps my not-so-DIY dh will build me some shelves?). One CAN dream. :) Okay, thanks for all your great posts and ideas.

[WendyK]

I keep the books I use regularly together and the books I want my kids to see and think "hm maybe I should read that" where they can easily get to them. Otherwise everything is willy nilly everywhere on shelves.

[mcconnellboys]

Books we're currently reading are in stacks in my bedroom, child's bedroom, and our den (or in our car). Books not in use are shelved. I have shelves for books we're using this year, by subject, and shelves tucked away in the backs of closets with books in storage for other years, also by subject.

[floridamom]

Before I read the responses, I'm going to answer.

I try to keep them in a general subject order, but they always end up willy nilly anyway, and I don't know how it happens. I give up for a while, reorganize them, and it starts all over again. :001_unsure:

[Chris in VA]

Organicmom's post is spam. Reported.

[mamaofblessings]

Ours is a disaster. I need to move the bookshelf out of my ds's bedroom and put it into the hall or into the living room and move dh's bookshelf into our room or the hall...and I'm working on doing this with the kids books.

http://hill.troy.k12.mi.us/staff/bnewingham/myweb3/library%20organization.htm

I'm planning on little crates or baskets such as the ones in the pictures and getting those at The Dollar Tree. I have the labels already. I just need to print and laminate them and adhere to the baskets.

This is something I am really wanting to start on ASAP since the kids love books and it'd be nice to have some sort of organization going on.

[Margaret in CO]

Ours are all catalogued, so I know what I own, just not where they are! When dd left home, the knowledge of where all books ARE left with her. Oh, we have some in the right place--all the Hentys and creation books and the Landmarks and Wodehouses and most of the horse and dog books, but... I'm going to be heading to the library tomorrow to borrow Pilgrim's Progress as I don't know where ours is! I figure that once the kids are all gone, I'll get them organized... :D We did find the other CS Lewis this evening, so that was good. Unfortunately, the nice hardbounds left with dd #2. We have over 4500 books.

[justamouse]

The school shelves? Very. We take it out, we put it back right where it was.

The *library* on the other hand...They're according to time period and subject---kinda.

[elise1mds]

I have five bookshelves in my house: One in each bedroom (three total), one in the living room, and one in the dining room.

Each child is allowed to organize his/her bookshelf according to his/her wishes. That means that DS has his organized by fiction/nonfiction and then by his own random category system. DD has hers organized by favorites - those go on the top shelf. The bookshelf in the living room is books that the children share. I have an entire shelf of seasonal/holiday books, a shelf that is primarily Little Golden Books and easy readers, and a shelf of soft-cover books that include a lot of children's classics (Ping, Stone Soup, etc.). The bookshelf in the dining room is exclusive to homeschool curriculum and reference books. The bookshelf in my room is MINE. On the top shelf I have my collection of classics and favorite reads. Then I have a shelf of parenting and general reference books (dictionary, thesaurus, etc.), and a shelf of nonfiction and DH's few books. Then there's a shelf that contains my collection of 'National Geographic' magazines, and the bottom shelf contains my genealogical resources that I have gathered and received over the years.

Is it perfect? Nope, but it works for now :D

[3blessingmom]

Mine is a work in progress...

I have 3 big bookcases upstairs. The top shelves are curricula, Bible and Bible history, art, music and poetry. One case is for fiction and children's picture books. Another case holds history (organized chronologically...usually:tongue_smilie:). The other case holds science...organized somewhat by topic (we have a whole shelf for animals LOL).

I have another big bookcase downstairs with a bunch of my stuff...things I don't want the kids to have access to.

My dc are young...I envision needing lots more shelves...and one of those doohickey's that scans the barcode to organize it all before we hit the logic stage.

[Scholand]

I dream of having a library room one day! One day!

[kokotg]

Homeschool books are organized by subject. I have science/poetry/etc. sections. History is divided into world history and American history and then organized roughly chronologically. My books are divided into subjects (fiction, memoir/biography, religion, essays, poetry, etc.) and then alphabetized. My oldest keeps his books alphabetized by author; the other kid books are just on the shelves randomly. It all sounds more organized than it actually is, though. I find alphabetizing sort of...soothing, so I do it every so often, but there are also giant piles of books waiting to be put in the proper place floating around all over my house and shoved into stacks in front of the alphabetized books on my shelves. I counted my bookshelves the other day; there are 21 of them, including an entire shelf devoted to storing books I haven't yet figured out where to put permanently. This is why getting a Nook has been such a huge relief for me.

[RanchGirl]

I have one tall shelf of homeschool materials that are not currently in use, it is in the basement and is organized by topic. Dh and I have a couple shelves in our bedroom, those are just organized into fiction/non-fiction. The kids have a ton of books -- shelves in their room and the playroom. But dh and I are trying to cut down and I'm going to just the Kindle for new books, plus occasional library use.

The books I'm getting rid of go on half.com or to Goodwill.