My resolution this year is to organize my library. Most of my collection is nonfiction, so I’ve started working on putting everything in order by Library of Congress style. The number of books is probably in the low thousands - I think another mission might be to catalog them while I’m at it.

Any tips or suggestions? If you have a larger collection, how do you organize and catalog your books?

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[–] dresden@discuss.online 2 points 5 days ago

Like most people, I don't have enough place to organize them how I want, which is simply Genre > Author > Alphabetical / Series Release Order.

I try to keep to that, but authors / books are moved around depending on shelf space, trying to have all books by an author in a single shelf. So, if a shelf is 50% full, and next author will take about 75%, it is moved to next free shelf, and another author with 50% or less than 50% space required is moved there. So, there are some J books after S, and things like that.

Also, for most non-fiction and books not in series, inside a single shelf, sort them by size, so they are sorted as large to small. That is more of my wife's thing, but I am used to it now and like them this way.

As for cataloging, they are all cataloged on LibraryThing, which I have found best for cataloging needs. Though I haven't tried anything new in last 5-7 years, so don't know if there are other services out there with better cataloging options. I tried using simple offline files, but I forget the books I already have, and after buying duplicate books twice I decided that having an online service is better for this.