Re: [Meta] Wait, you sort your books how???

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