ah ah ah. i said "arrange". i don't think arrange necessarily entails organize. :)
I finally got my measuring tape out and measured. 37 feet of books. Which is probably nothing compared to everyone else since I never bought books in college. I checked them from the library. Even today, I don't buy them all. I read 2 a week on average, I'd go broke if I did. Plus, I hoed out a lot of books, especially desk copies, during the lean years, selling them in order to pay the rent. Had I kept them, I'd probably have another 10 feet of books.
My method is the most convoluted. I arrange by topic: one shelf dedicated to the exemplary ethnographies all in excellent shape since I read them as library books first, then bought them I liked them so much. I keep philosophy on one shelf. The sociological classics on another. History on another. books I used to use for teaching family and gender. Book used for teaching women's studies and feminist theory. Another shelf for sociology of culture and media. A shelf for books on weight lifting, diet, exercise. A shelf for books on gardening and woodworking. A shelf for books related to web development, usability, user experience, and IT management. A book of weird old books we got through freecycle -- human sexuality text from the 30s, etc. African american studies-related and ethnicity related. A shelf dedicated to the 60s. Two shelves for sociology of work and economics. Two shelves dedicated to marx, marxish, and authors who are heavy users of marx, including books about social inequality, stratification, and class.
Within that, I must shelve by height. R thinks I'm nuts for doing this, but I'm very visual and it's a cue to help me remember where a book is. The books spine color, condition, and height are what I use to find the book -- along with subject matter. Although that gets tough: do I want janet Halley under philosophy or feminist theory?
>On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 6:16 PM, Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > More or less normal ways: Fiction, History, Reference, Crafts, Cookbooks.
> >
> > The only slightly weird thing is that I put philosophy together with
> > poetry, and psychology books together with buddhist/zen/meditation type
> > books.
> >
> > Then, there's the really boring shelf of books I've written...mostly about
> > goddamned operating systems, programming, development tools, ugh, ugh, ugh.
> >
> > Joanna
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>--
>*********************************************************
>Alan P. Rudy
>Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
>Central Michigan University
>124 Anspach Hall
>Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
>517-881-6319
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk