How Do You Organize Your Books?

[KatiesCorner]

Another labeling solution might be craft tape, (aka Washi tape) because it come in so many different patterns/colors. You might even find actual dinosaur tape for dinos, apple tape for fall, etc. That would be super cute Then, I would sort them by what letter you would likely use them with, (if you are like me, alphabetizing them only works if you can remember the exact title. I often forget the name of books I only use once a year) but add the tape to the spine for easy searching.
You could make a "key" on a sheet of paper with a small piece of the tape next to the category, so each staff member knows what tape to look for when pulling books for a specific theme.

Here's some photos so you know what I mean.

[mim]

There is also the booksapp and book buddy app that you can get if you have an iPhone. Not sure about android phones. But it has a barcode scanner that you can use with your camera. Like the library thing but maybe easier as you just need your phone and not the computer. I ha e scanned a few books and it seems like it will work good. You can also use tags and if you borrow it out and to who. HTH

[heyhun77]

We use a database http://www.collectorz.com/ and the cue cat and enter them all into the database and indicate the theme box they are in. Then I got cardboard boxes free from walmart in the baking section (the ones the packets of muffin mixes come in)and label them. I then label the back of each book with the theme they need to be returned to. That way I can pull out the box with the theme I want and if I'm looking for a specific book I can pull it up on the database and find out which box it is in. There is also a check out option so when I borrow out books (or movies or cd's because we have all ofthem in there as well) I can remember who has it.

[Shell]

When I used to work at a center and was in charge of organizing the library, I would pick big name authors (Eric Carle, Jan Brett, etc) in their own sections and then organized the others by subject. It's easy to put The Very Hungry Caterpillar in a butterfly unit, but I felt it was more memorable to put it into Eric Carle so others could have access to all his books when doing an author study. To this day, if you gave me a title, I could find it in seconds. Of course, I'm sure it's a disaster now since I'm out of there and was the only one that had organizational skills. Now, I have maybe 50 or so, so I just put them on a shelf in whatever order, usually by size..the little ones make such a mess!

[daycare]

...don't start an excel file...there's something so much better already out there if you're a nerdy book person (no offense, I'm talking about myself!). It's Librarything.com. I've got all my (ahem...er...5,000) books on there, and I love it, love it, love it. You enter your books by just typing in the ISBN, or maybe the title, or maybe just a word and the author name--whatever works for you--then everything else comes up automatically--a photo of the cover, the author, etc, etc, etc. If you want to be truly anal (what? who? me?), you can add a whole bunch of "tags" that you might use later to look up the book (i.e. "dinosaurs," "letter A," "bottom shelf," whatever works for you!) Then when you want to look at your list of books, you can organize them however you want (so if you wanted to, you could have it alphabetize your list, and then make your shelves match). It's free up to 200 books, and then I think it was $25 forever for the rest. (That was years ago, so it may have changed.) If you want to be really like a librarian, you can buy a "cue cat" from them (my friend gave me one!) and it scans the bar code on the back of your book so you don't even have to type in the ISBN (totally worth it if you were going to do your whole collection). My virtual library is gorgeous. :-) (You can see mine here, if you want to see how it works.)

Now as for my shelves...I'm a mess. I've got some organized by topic, some by favorite authors, some as sets, some just randomly, and many in a heap on the floor that don't fit in the shelves. But librarything helps me remember what I have so I can go in search of it.

I am struggling to use this site and hope you might be able to help.

I bought a cat cue as you suggested what a lifesave it has been.

The issue that I am having is that they were automatically listing in alphabetical order, but now they are listing as they are added. I can NOT for the life of me figure out how to get them to go back to ABC order.

any input would br great. I tried to get support from the site but that did not work.

[nothingwithoutjoy]

The issue that I am having is that they were automatically listing in alphabetical order, but now they are listing as they are added. I can NOT for the life of me figure out how to get them to go back to ABC order.

any input would br great. I tried to get support from the site but that did not work.

No problem! It's a really good site, and it can do tons of cool stuff. I haven't figured out everything yet, but this I can do!

Under "your books," you can click either "covers" or "list." Click "list." Then you'll see a bunch of info--title, author, tags, etc. (If you don't like how that's organized, you can change it to all sorts of different configurations by clicking a new "style" or making your own...) All you have to do is click the heading of the column you want them organized by. So to have alphabetical by title, click "title." Alphabetical by author, click "author." You can also sort by clicking the side-by-side arrows (one up, one down) that are in that menu, near "style." I'd never tried that before, so I just did it, and it's cool--you can sort by two categories (like alphabetical by author, and then all the books by one author alphabetical by title).

Hope that makes sense. Let me know if you have more questions. I got a bit obsessed when I was first entering my library, and explored quite a bit.