Library management and reading scheduling

I'm sure many of you here, being intellectual types, have had to wrestle with the problem of having waaaay too many books at home for your own good, and waaay too many things to read, perhaps even as part of your academic curriculum.

How do you do that? How do you organize all the books you own, how do you prioritize reading and predict reading time, how do you keep tabs on all the books you have and where they are stored?

Is there any dedicated software for this? Any protocols and methods that one can follow?

And, if this is not the right place to discuss this, where would you recommend I ask this kind of question? I'm in a bit of helpless lost distress right now, since I'm trying to order my library, and I'm assaulted by the illogical craving to read all the books at once, as well as the memories from those I've already read, and it's kind of overwhelming and paralyzing and I feel like I'm in a Quicksand Box.

What I do is have all the things I haven't read that aren't reference books on one book case. When I'm done with them, they wander off to one of the other book cases. But at least I can find the new stuff.

I have a mixed shelf and piling system for my books... and random filing system on my Kindle I occasionally try to sort out... and then give up to do something else.

Scientific my reading schedule is not, I'm afraid: I go totally by gut. So totally an eaty-eaty what's in front of me bookworm, me.

Is there an ebook with the Dewey Decimal Classification system explained on it?

Are you sure this would be useful?

edited 13th Sep '12 12:27:32 PM by TheHandle

Yup. I do. If you have an almighty big lot of books, which you seem to have, there has been nothing to beat Dewey's system. If anything, it could be used as a starting block.

In fact, thanks for that. I have become more interested in that very subject since I read about it in one of Eric Flint's Ring of Fire 'verse books.

edited 13th Sep '12 12:33:17 PM by TamH70

Well, I suppose I should give it a try.

Doesn't help that I need to wear a bicycle mask◊ while doing this because the accumulated dust causes my allergies to flare and my nose to snot and sneeze uncontrollably. Obviously, I take the chance to carefully dust all the books.

At least they aren't moldy.

I'd love to do a Dewey, myself: but, in reality, I have to resort to "what will fit where on which shelf", to maximise the possibilities. <sighs>

Nobody warned me when I started reading that it'd lead to carbon fixing... or bookshelves.

I need to buy label sticks and a thick marker to do the deweying...

I used to read way more than I do now, but I have two instances where I read for leisure, one is when I'm on military duty and just sitting in a squadcar or at the gate. The other is the shitter.

I've chomped through lots of books on the shitter though.

The wife and I pick a handful of books we intend to keep and reread a few times before donating them to a community library thing at our apartment complex. Or you can donate to your local library. They either put them into their collection or sell them to help generate funding.

As for organization. I try to organize by Genre and sort my non-fiction collections by topic. I have lost a lot of my military fiction section though. This has upset me and I need to work ons teady replacing my lost manuals and college books I kept.

Plastic containers for long term storage with somethign inside that absorbs moisture. Seal them tightly check them periodically.

edited 13th Sep '12 6:01:56 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I'm going with the "Put books where they fit" method as well. We actually need to go through and prune our collection, since there's a bunch of books that were decent, but not good enough to keep around, that can be donated to Goodwill or a secondhand bookstore or something. We also have a couple of duplicates that we can get rid of.

edited 13th Sep '12 4:56:18 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

Nooooo! Giving books away hurts, though... <hair rises on neck in horror>

I tend to trim using three methods 1) lending and never getting back, 2) losing on planes, trains and other peoples' auto-mobiles and 3) them falling apart, and me having to throw them out as a result.

I'm pathetic when it comes to getting rid of books. DVDs? Easy. CDs? Doddle. Old games and gaming systems? Out they go... But, books are my major failing in the clutter-reduction department.

edited 14th Sep '12 1:57:38 PM by Euodiachloris

You have a hoarding problem.

@Euo: You're right. I shouldn't give them away, I should cut them up and use their pages for crafts!

and It's not a hoarding problem. It's a building technique. You can't make sturdy forts out of DVDs and games. Those plastic covers are waaaaay too slick to go high enough, and the discs themselves? Pointless!

I've just started buying all my books on google books so that I can read them from my phone. Then I always have a book with me.

I have no useful hints for doing the amount of reading you want, other than using every available moment not required for something like a job or maintaining health or something to read. I could be reading books right now but am wasting time on the internet.

As for organisation, there was a time when I was going to organise my books according to the Library of Congress system, since it is the main one used in the United States besides Dewey Decimal (just about all universities here use it, besides the Library of Congress itself; I don't remember about usage abroad and can't be bothered to check) and therefore I have familiarity with it, but is just barely uncommon enough that it can be 'cool'. You could also consider some minor one-library system like what the Bodleian supposedly uses, or what they used in The Name of the Rose, or something. Or invent your own. It's just that Dewey Decimal is of the devil. (Or maybe I'm a library classification hipster.)

edited 15th Sep '12 3:14:35 PM by Hatshepsut

I really should read more... readership is something I've been striving to rebuild in the past years.

I don't have that many books that I need to be concerned too much about organizing or remembering. But about organizing things, just make convenient categories and sort them the best you can, and readjust when you need it.

Prioritizing/predicting reading time... I don't know, I just read when I have free time and interest. I think if you can make reading something you enjoy, it really helps. It's less of an obligation and more natural. But if there's no time because you're busy, then oh well, you just read the next opportunity.

You're ordering a library? How many books do you have and what's it for?

I think the OP was about a private library. As in "one has way too many books both for shelves and eReaders, what ho!".

I keep a catalogue, even though my collection isn't very large - about 400 books in my bedroom, and perhaps 100 more in another house. I lend out a lot of books to friends, though, so I started the catalogue to keep track of where they were. I use Goodreads to keep track of the books I want to read, but I don't follow it strictly. It depends on what I feel like reading.

I just stick things wherever there's empty space when I don't need them, then go trawling around for them when I do. This applies to most things I own, not just books. But living in a huge, cluttered mess isn't for everyone.

All my literature I need for work is finally able to be stored in my brand new office at work finally, so while my girlfriend has her leather books in the glass closed bookcase at home, our other collections are on random shelves in the den.

Now the kids' books are all in their respective rooms. We don't have enough to really worry about.

Librarian here. I organize my personal collection by medium, then genre, then author. That said, I consider "school books" a genre for these purposes, so my collection basically boils down to comics, books, DVD's, videogames; then each is further grouped by genre (scifi, fantasy, humor, etc) and finally I put all the works by a given author together. Not terribly rigorous, but very intuitive.

Now if you want to be really unconventional, try to catalog using Dublin Core for classification, QR code for labels, and put it all in an XML database/web page. You'll be miles ahead of most libraries if you can pull it off. ;)

Or just pick anything from here.

If you want to be fancy but not go through all these hoops, you can actually just look through Worldcat, or the LoC Online Catalog and see what call numbers and subjects they've assigned.

edited 21st Sep '12 3:44:00 PM by Earnest

Yuan: ...500 books is not much? That is quite a bit of dead tree material.

For storage. Get scans of your books and store them electronically. I would keep a book collection trimmed down to items you will use frequently. For me that is an assortment of military manuals, hisotry books, and weapons related reading materials.