How To File Your Library Books

Or at least, how I do it.

Some of our books.

Believe it or not, the above pic only shows about one-third of the books we keep. That does not include 'grown up' books, which are stored elsewhere. And, you also may not believe that I recently got rid of easily half of the books in our house. This is what is left.

So how to organize this homeschool library? I organize by subject.
So one entire six-foot book case is history. That is divided by groupings of ancient, european, U.S., etcetera. Beyond that, I dont alphabetize. Each section has its own space on the shelf. For the moment, Big Sister helped me make sticky labels to notate each section, so we know where to look for a certain book, and where to return it when done.

However, as you might predict, once the books are taken off the shelf it becomes hard to put them back in the proper spot. Especially if you end up with a big pile of books to be shelved; it seems a daunting task. So I have my little system. Its not quite Dewey Decimal, but it works.

Supplies. Keep it simple. Post-it tabs and clear packing tape. Colored stickers would have worked as well, but there was not a variety of colors available where I shopped. I can also use other peices of colored paper.

Decide what color goes with what subject. The goal is to get all books in one subject marked with the same color so you can easily see exactly where to shelve a book.
About 1/2 inch or so from the bottom of the binding edge is a good place. The public library usually uses this spot as well. This spot usually only covers the publisher's mark, not the author or title. Measure each one, so that when finished, all the colored tabs line up with each other and make a nice stripe across the shelf.

Secure with packing tape. I know there are materials made and specially cut for just this purpose. But I am all about doing things for less money. You should be able to do an entire library for less than $10.00 this way. While you have the packing tape out, check the edges and corners of your paperbacks and see if they can use some reinforcement.

The finished product. Its easy to see that books about plants are marked with light green stickers. Very simple to look at the book you are shelving, see the green and pop it where it goes.