How to organize your home library

If you are a book lover, chances are that you have books all over your house. On the shelves, on the floor, even on the stairs. When you try to find a particular book you want to read, you have no idea where it is. Or you go to the bookstore and purchase a book that catches your interest, only to find that you already had a copy that you had forgotten about. Here are some tips to keep your book collection under control.

First, gather up all your books, read and unread. Sort them into piles by fiction and nonfiction. Within the nonfiction pile, sort again by subject. Nature, crafts, how-to, and history are examples of subjects you might have in your nonfiction pile. With the fiction pile, sort by genre, such as literary and science fiction. Within the genre, sort the books so that books by the same author are together.

Now decide where you will keep each type of book. If you are fortunate enough to have a room with enough bookshelves to hold all your books, your task is much easier. If your bookshelves are spread out over several rooms, you must spend more thought on where your books are to go.

If all your bookshelves are in one room, start with the type of book you have the most of – fiction or nonfiction. Put the books on the shelf in the order you have sorted them – by category or genre, then by author name. As you put the books on the shelf, make a list of the book's title, author, category (fiction or nonfiction), genre if applicable, edition, the shelf they are on, and ISBN number. You will need the ISBN number if you ever decide to sell any of your books online. You will use this list later to further organize your books.

If your bookshelves are in different rooms, first decide which room should hold which books. If you have a home office and often use a certain type of books for reference, then those books should go on shelves in your home office. If you have a lot of fiction, you will want to put those books on shelves in the room where you do most of your leisure reading, whether it is the living room or bedroom. Once you have decided which room should hold which type of book, start shelving the books, making a list as you go along. On the list, add the room name to the listing for each book.

Now that all your books are shelved and in order, use your list to make a searchable database of your library. You may use a database program or a spreadsheet program for this. The database program will be more flexible, but the spreadsheet program will work well also. In the database program, create a table with fields for title, author, category, genre (This will be blank for nonfiction books.), edition, ISBN number, shelf, and room. For the shelf field, you can use a designation like "1C", meaning the third shelf of the first bookcase. Use any designation that is meaningful to you. In the spreadsheet program, create columns for these fields. Now start filling in the information from your list. This may take some time if you have a lot of books, so do not be discouraged if you cannot do this all in one day. When you have finished, you will have a record of all your books that you can filter by type, such as computer books; by genre, such as Westerns; or by author.

You can use the record to decide later if you need or want to buy more books on a particular subject, or if perhaps you should prune your collection a little. If you often loan books to your friends, you can even add fields for the person who borrowed the book and when they borrowed it. When you sell or give away a book, you can either delete it from the database, or add a field to the database to indicate that the book was sold or otherwise disposed of. Adding a record for a new book you buy takes minutes. Organizing your library allows you to take more time reading and enjoying your books and less time hunting for the book you wanted.