It's hard to find the things you're looking for without sorting them first, and contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be a librarian to sort your books. Here is a way to easily find your books and prevent them from falling off the shelves.
Steps
Step 1. Remove all books from the shelves
Divide them into two piles: those to keep and those to throw away.
Step 2. Remove loose sheets and bookmarks from books
Recycle your throwaway papers.
Step 3. Set aside the books to be repaired
Later you will decide whether it is worth repairing or replacing them with a newer copy.
Step 4. If you think you have some valuable books, try looking for them on sites like Bookscouter or RentScouter to find potential buyers.
Step 5. Get rid of the books you don't want to keep
Try selling them to a shop that sells used books or donating them to a local school or church. Avoid donating books that are so bad they are unusable. Recycle them yourself.
Step 6. Clean the shelves with cleaning or furniture polish products
You may not have another chance to do it for a long time.
Step 7. Decide how to order your collection
There are many ways you can sort your books: by size, color, number of pages, topic, personal preference, publisher, publication date, purchase date, author, reading difficulty, etc.
Step 8. Create labels for your books to add letters or numbers to the covers
Step 9. Return the books to the library in the order you chose
Enjoy your clean and tidy library!
Advice
- Use these steps as guidelines to customize according to your personality. It's your collection, order it the way you like it. Remember that you can reorder it whenever you want.
- Put the bulkier books, such as school books, recipe books, etc. on a lower shelf so they can't fall on someone's head.
- If you prefer to use a more formal cataloging system, you can use LibraryThing to organize your books on the internet and share your tastes with other people.
- If you are a student, remember to put the books you use for study in a place where they are easy to consult.
- If you decide to sort your books by topic, start with the general topic and divide it into subgroups. For example, cookbooks could be sorted by type of cuisine: Italian, French, Mexican, etc. The novels could be sorted by author, or by genre (e.g. science fiction, love, mystery, etc.). You can create very specific groups such as Mexican vegetarian cuisine or English romance novels. You can sort children's books by the recommended age.
- For home bookstores, alphabetical order is probably the best choice.
- You can use a computer program to sort and catalog your book collection. If you have a Mac, try Delicious Library at https://www.delicious-monster.com. If you use Windows, try MediaMan https://www.imediaman.com. There are also free programs such as
- You can get a lot of information about books from
Warnings
- It won't be an easy feat. Give yourself at least 3 hours - 2 days, depending on the amount of books you have.
- Do not put labels or stickers on collectible books, otherwise it will be more difficult to resell them.
