How do you organize your books?

[Mickey]

How do you organize your home libraries, nerdfighters?

 

I own many hundreds of books, all packed into my tiny room. My shelves don't leave much room for creativity, so I cannot use the celebrated 'color-gradient' organizing method. I've opted for a rough category system instead. Librarything.com helped me out a lot!

These are my current categories:
 -reference
-fantasy / urban fantasy
-sci-fi
-'real' literature (classics / modern classics)
-nonfiction
-poetry
-books about books/writing
-historical fiction
-YA
-YA authors who are friends (John / Maureen / E. Lockhart / Scott Westerfeld / David Levithan, etc.)

Edit, November 2011: Hiya! It's been a while since this post, and since then my home library has changed. I've got fiction, YA, nonfiction, biography + memoir, drama, poetry, reference, and travel. This makes a bit more sense than the last system, I think! 

If you're interested, I've got my whole library photographed and catalogued here. Enjoy!

 

[Juse Zuko]

I only really organize by books by series and then in those series in the order the story is. In fact when I am at a book store or a library and the books in one series are not arranged in that order I get annoyed.

[Elizabeth Rapalo]

I have over 200 books and I organize it by height basically. Though, first its nonfiction, graphic novels, folklore/mythology, anthropologies, classics, drama, poetry, height. Then I group authors together.

LibraryThing does sound so useful though.

[Ali M]

Well, my bookshelf isn't really organized, but it will be someday! Maybe. I like organizing books in alphabetical order by last name then title. They're just easier to find that way and it really annoys me when books are out of place in a library because it's harder to find my book. So, whenever (if) I get around to organizing all my books, that's how I'll do it.

[Sam Reid]

I only have about 150 books so they just go in order of how much I like them.