How do you organize your home library?

[AnnR33]

I love books... They are on shelves, in baskets, in piles in most rooms of the house, in the car, etc.....
Now that I'm trying to get more organized for homeschooling and in general, I'm looking for a good way to organize many of the kid's books. I also need a better way of knowing what I have so I don't keep getting duplicates from Goodwill, etc. Do 3x5 cards work well for cataloging-do you really use them?
I at least have them separated by fiction vs non-fiction now but that's about it. I bought some of the cardboard magazine holders and divided my curriculum books by subject. Should I do this for many of the non-fiction bks too for easier searching?
Any ideas?
Thanks
Ann

[mom2kbeth]

I am a serious book-a-holic as well! There are books all over the house. Some of them are organized, some are not. Here's what I do. I have about a doen of those huge rubbermaid/sterlite totes in my basement. Each one is labeled with a theme/season/holiday/whatever and holds the appropriate books/movies/games/magazines/cookie cutters/stickers/etc. That part is all very nice and organized. I grab a tote and bring it upstairs, put all the stuff under the nature table in the living room in the roll out bin and put the previous stuff back into it's tote and put it back in the basement. Both kiddos get really excited when I come up with one of those big totes! They will spend the whole day taking things out of it and checking them out ...

Then there's the rest of our books, lol. The ones that either don'e fit into a category/theme, or that there are not enough to make a whole themed box, or those that the kids really want to look at freqently, the board books, etc. Those are stored in 8 bins in the living room (2 large bins), dd's bedroom (4 smaller bins) and ds's bedroom (2 smaller bins). It's hit or miss whether we can actually find a book from there that we are looking for. There's also a bunch of books piled on the floor between my bed and dd's in my bedroom. A large pile. And there is a large wicker basket next to the couch with more books. That was our library basket, but since we have stopped going to our local library (long story - horribly unorganized, children's books are not sorted/catalogued, just dumped in bins by letter, they kept forwarding me to collection agencies for books I returned months/years prior while ignoring my requests for them to just look for the book and find it (which they would only do when I complained to the collection agency about them and they mad ethe library look - and bingo - there's the book. every time), ds got hurt every time we were in there because it's just not a safe place for little kids, I could go on, lol...) it is now just a catch all for more books.

We also have a science library set up i nthe living room. I used one of the wooden frames that holds thse plastic bins for this. The top shelf has all the bins removed, and has our set of read and find out about the world books, as well as our field guides and other reference type books. The middle shelf has only one bin, with the leap pad stuff in it. In the place where the other bins should be are the leap pad and our set of Getting to Know Nature's Children books from scholastic. Bottom shelf is all bins. One has all the Magic Schoolbus books we own, theo thers have science/math materials (prism, magnifying glasses, magnets, etc.).

[katybear mama]

I have a large at home library too. I am definately a bibliomaniac. Cataloging them is a great idea, I never thought of doing that (strange, being that I am a librarian). All of my books, and my dd's, are stored in large rectangular shaped baskets which are stacked on top of one another to save space. They kind of fall into one-subject-per-basket for non-fiction. I do end up with several baskets full of subjects that are our favorites, mine being yoga and philosophy, dd's being animals. For homeschooling you could try to create a simplified Dewey system for your books by cataloging each on a card (you could keep the cards organized in a box similar to a recipe box) and then shelving them all by the first three letters of the author's name. You can organize the index card box by subject. I know no matter how organized I try to be with my books they'll still end up on the floor of my car, piled next to my bed and on the edge of the bathtub. My dream is to have a house big enough to use one whole room as "the library" with high cherry wood shelves and big comfy chairs.........Right now I'll have to settle for tripping over them in my small apartment.

[Ravin]

I have books divided into three main categories: children's fiction, nonfiction, and adult fiction. The adult fiction is alphabetical by author. The nonfiction is alphabetical by subject (though not currently alphebetized w/in subjects, I usually do this by author. My own little quirks also tend to go into what subject something is placed in). There is a small subdivision for ancient lit and another for poetry.

The children's books right now are divided into chapter books, which go rather randomly on shileves out of DD's reach (but will get alphabetized one of these days), my collection of nice picture books which I read w/ DD and also keep out of her reach, a full shelf of Seuss (DH's fave) that DD can reach if she's really motivated, and her board books on a shelf in easy reach. We have a huge cubby bookshelf in DD's room where all her books and many of her toys (in baskets) are kept. I currently need another bookshelf in the living room; the one we have is overflowing and another one we had collapsed on us! (fortunately DD wasn't standing near it at the time--the wood holding the shelves up splintered and all the shelves collapsed down on each other, sending some of the books flying.What I get for using secondhand stuff that sat in the heat for a long while : )

[ShannonCC]

Ok, you had me til you got to the 3x5 card indexing system : I will never be that organized in this lifetime! (now I feel like a real slacker :LOL) That wouldn't work with my kids anyway. When my dd wants to read something she pulls as many books off the shelf as she can, goes through them, reads half of them and then, if I'm lucky, stuffs them back in piles. Most of the time she doesn't even get that far and I have to remind her (or just give up and do it myself )

Having said all that, I do have a vague order to the books for when I put things away. We have fiction picture books all in one area. These books are in shallow bins, standing upright, with titles facing out. Makes it easy to flip through them, and easier to put back. Much easier than when I had them in regular shelf order where you read the spines (I got the idea from MDC somewhere - the cluttering board maybe?). I put the hardcovers in one bin, the paperbacks in the other and a third bin has "kiddie" books that my three year old prefers. Books that are too big to fit in the bins, but not oversize, are on the sides of them. A small shelf has board books. Over that shelf, wedged against the tv, we keep the oversize books. In another section of the room we have the science books. I do try and shelve those by subject but that's about it (and like I said, that doesn't last long when dd goes through them - but hey, that's what they are there for!). In dd's room are all her chapter books, her magazines, the magic schoolbus books and any other books she brought up and forgot to bring down.

All the adult books are in the computer room on shelves on the walls. They are not indexed but I do know where the categories are and can usually find something without too much effort. Oh, except there's a few boxes of our fiction upstairs in the closet. And dh's gaming manuals sit collecting dust on a shelf in the bedroom. Yeah, we're a mess

[Mom4tot]

Some people label their shelves with the appropriate books above. You might have "Pond Life" and "US History" or something like that. I actually used to use the magazine folders, but have more books that fit neatly in there.

I really like the science shelf idea

This is motivating me to organize a little more

[chanale]

I know this will sound strange, but with 4-5 thousand books, it's the only way we can find things. I organize our books by Library of Congress number. Each book has a little sticker at the base of its spine with the first bit of the LoC code. That way, even DH knows where exactly to put something back.

Upstairs has A-N, some of P, and Q-Z; downtairs has PA-PT. Basically, that just means non-fiction goes upstairs and fiction goes downstairs. (My homeschooling books are L.) I don't have them catalogued though - too big of a project.

It works well for us. An added benefit was that I was able to find many books quickly in the 8-story university library without looking them up ("British Lit - that's PR on the 7th floor").

[UUMom]

I sort by topic, no matter the level. So history books all go together, in chrono order. The giant Time/Life book on Ancient Egypt is side by side with the easy reader book on King Tut. Topical fiction is sorted in with these as well (which means in with the ancient Greek factual stuff is Eurpides and Homer).

The science books are together, sorted by topic, animals (land and water, with evolution, dino etc books first in the line up) anatomy etc etc etc. All the art books are together, sorted by medium and era-- paintng, photography, film, music: all the Ren stuff is together, all the Impressionsits are together, composers/musicians have their own shelf, which I try to sort in a timeline. So the Beatles book is towards the end of the line-up, Mozart in the middle, kwim?

We have many large bookshelves, and I am able to grab a book on Mesopotamia as easily as I can find Artemis Fowl (with the fantasy fiction). Of course, I seem to be the only one in the family to posess the knowledge of which shelf in which room holds information concerning the American Civil War. I've thought about labels, and I should do that. I like the idea of logging them, but I know i won't.

[mirlee]

I sort by genre then alphabetically by author. I was told a long time ago that setting up an electronic catalog of my holdings and assigning call numbers was crazy and that I bring enough work home with me already. :LOL

[Ravin]

I get into moods where I just really want to organize things. Back when I had a lot more books, I kept them much more organized. I unfortunately pared down my book collection significantly over the past few years. I miss my books!