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From: Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: [Meta] Wait, you sort your books how???
Date: 17 Jul 2024 18:30:22 GMT
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On 2024-07-17, BillGill <tonisdad215@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/16/2024 5:15 PM, Ahasuerus wrote:
>> On 7/16/2024 9:19 AM, BillGill wrote:
>>> On 7/15/2024 12:25 PM, Ahasuerus wrote:
>>>> On 7/15/2024 9:48 AM, Ted Nolan <tednolan> wrote:
>>>>> In article <v738di$n4rq$1@dont-email.me>,
>>>>> Tony Nance  <tnusenet17@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> More signs of madness in this crazy world:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I just ran across the results of a poll that asked 29,000 Americans
>>>>>> about their book-owning habits, and friends, I am shocked — shocked! —
>>>>>> to report that there are people who have absolutely no organizational
>>>>>> system whatsoever. Worse — worse, I tell you — there are some who sort
>>>>>> their books by color. Color!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Here’s a link to the main source (published in October):
>>>>>> https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/47712-how-many-books-americans-own-and-how-they-organize-them
>>>>>
>>>>> I could read the link, I suppose, but I wonder how many people actually
>>>>> have a sufficient number of books such that they need to be organized.
>>>>
>>>> As a general observation, the viability of various organizational 
>>>> systems depends on the number of books to be organized. What works 
>>>> reasonably well for a few hundred books -- e.g. sorting by the 
>>>> author's last name -- may be problematic for a collection with a few 
>>>> thousand books and completely unworkable for a collection that 
>>>> contains tens of thousands of books.
>>> Have you checked your local library lately?  They do have
>>> thousands of books.  They use a system that separates the
>>> books by class, first fiction and non-fiction.  Then
>>> they separate the non-fiction according to the Dewey Decimal
>>> Code.  The Fiction is separated into a number of sub
>>> classifications, such as General Fiction, Mysteries,
>>> Science Fiction, and of course Children's.  Then within
>>> those categories they are sorted by the author's last
>>> name.
>> 
>> [snip]
>> 
>> It's a viable system for certain types of use cases. Unfortunately, any 
>> system that sorts books "by the author's last name" comes with inherent 
>> limitations. Suppose you have N bookcases dedicated to authors whose 
>> last name starts with an "H". Everything is fine as long as your library 
>> is static or close to it. Then you discover that you absolutely love D. 
>> K. Holmberg (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?200173) and/or Nathan 
>> Hystad (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?249647) -- to pick two 
>> random prolific authors -- and suddenly you have a problem.
>
> I'm don't understand what the problem is.  Are you suggesting that
> the books are packed in, so that there is no room to insert that
> many more?  If that is the case all you have to do is to move
> books on down the shelves to make room.  I have been known to do
> that.  Or, best case, build new shelves and spread the existing
> books out to make room.  I have been known to do that.

"All you have to do"?? I have 88 shelves of alphabetical by author
mass market sized sf paperbacks (probably another 7-8 shelves of sf
paperbacks sorted by other criteria such as anthologies, Star Trek,
and then my Favorite bookcase is mixed with hardcovers).  When I
"discover" a "new" author like Elizabeth Bear and have to fit in another
10-15 'B' books, it poses a problem!

My solution is (or was) to have a staging bookcase that all my new
books went on.  So mostly just two places to look to locate specific
books. When the staging bookcase filled up every couple of years, I
would do a massive merge sort to shift my whole library and empty the
staging bookcase.

Now that I'm buying almost exclusively e-books, the staging bookcase has
been taken over by other special purpose shelves like manga.  I would note
that I find it much harder to find my e-books to re-read than I did with
the physical books.  The staging bookcase was nice for recently read good
books!

Chris