Hi. My name is Brandon Vogt, and I am a bookaholic. I desire wisdom, and therefore seek knowledge, and therefore read, and therefore love books.
And here’s another confession: I’m an engineer. I need systems, I need order, and I can’t escape my ‘efficiency’ radar. My mind is like a bloodhound that sniffs out inefficiencies, barking incessantly until they’re improved.
The book-lover within sees hardbacks and paperbacks scattered haphazardly, and grins like Cindy Lou Who on Christmas day. The engineer within looks at the same books, at the same disorganization, and cringes like the Grinch in frustration.
My right-brain fights my left at the Battle of the Bookshelves. My right-brain’s battle cry is, “Read! Dream! Wonder!” My left-brain coldly counters, “Organize! Categorize! Analyze!”
Most people don’t deal with this. Ordinary people aren’t compelled to sort, shelve, and survey their addictions. Most adults don’t own enough books to worry about organization, while most who do own enough books don’t care about organization (they’re too busy reading).
But lo, I’m one of the rare ones.
After recently topping the 1,000 book mark, I was forced to admit, in the spirit of A.A., that “I was powerless over book disorganization—that my library had become unmanageable.”
So, I decided to create a more efficient system to organize the books. Previously, my method was to group books in one of three categories: Christian, Classics, or Other. Within each category I shelved the books alphabetically by author, and the system worked well for a while.
But I ran into a problem. As I was asked to write and teach more often, I needed to gather resources on particular topics. But to do this, I had to skim the spines of hundreds of books. I needed a better, more efficient system than that, something that would allow me to find books quickly. The new system had to satisfy the efficiency-minded alarmist within.
To start my quest for the ideal system, I asked many friends how they organize their books. In the second part of this series, I’ll discuss the categorization system I finally decided on, based partly on my friend’s advice.
But merely ordering the books on the shelves wasn’t all I was searching for. I also wanted a method to analyze and inventory the books I had. In the third part of the series, I’ll share the tools I’ve found to keep tabs on a personal library, especially on the meta-data—the data about the data, the statistics about the books.
I hope I’m not alone here. If this resonates with you, let me know what you think in the comments section. Have you ever been frustrated with the disorder of your books? If not, why is that? If so, how did you begin bringing order to the chaos?
In the weeks to come I’ll also post some pictures and video of my escape from literary anarchy.
Stay tuned for the second part soon, but for now, if you share my addiction, unveil yourself as a fellow member of Bookaholics Onymous.
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| And so it begins….. |