mine are grouped by subject and the larger books grouped together (which annoys me a bit, but there is no other way unless you want all the shelves with high spacing)

and def not like [http://www.theselby.com/1_15_11_Favorite2010/slides/4_2_09_karl_lagerfeld06407.jpg
]this[/url]

a friend has a large collection of books and cds all organised together and by publishing date. def a interesting way.

p2pan - you raise a good point - what do I do with this monster which at the moment sits on its side and projects out a considerable distance?

i have a bookshelf built into my futon closet. books are only visible when i open the sliding paper doors.

sometimes there is overflow which is cool cuz no one can see. highly recommend.

but in general yeah i am waiting for a super ipad that feels like paper but has a touch screen, and then all that paper in my closet can go to the same place where my cds are.

Mine are all in nice, clear plastic containers in my garage. Thousands of dollars worth, some probably valuable at this point (seeing how some crazy fanboys seem to be paying for stararchitect's early stuff), but I just can't stomach the idea of a massive dust collector covering a wall.

I am getting the next ipad (or comparable competitor - out March 2!! or so they keep saying) and will put my categorized jpegs, books, etc. on there.

That was a big help, wasn't it?

ditch them for the ipad then, but keep them around for old times sake - kind of doing that now with my ipad, just need to move the books out of the apartment

I still have a yearning for a library room - books as wall texture



or something more minimalist

Ugh, I despise those paper-wrapped silent books. The entire point of a book is to share knowledge, why would one put a shroud on it?!

I have shelves, and group by topic. But the large flat books are stored flat, with smaller books on top that I tend to need to grab more frequently. Novels are all together, sketchbooks are all together, and arch books are grouped as (just looking behind me to see what my rough arrangement is...): political, monographs, books from school (like Ching and Jencks), philosophy, urban/city, and a bunch of vintage decorating books.

Just glancing at it, I realize my book has a lot of hippie topics (Jersey Devil, Nomadic Furniture, Co-Housing, feng shui). I swear you guys, I'll be living in a yurt with my chickens before my time on this earth is up.

i'm sorry..but a touch screen will never replace the feeling of thumbing through a book for me...which explains why i have probably 600 or so books..it's been a while since i've counted... but i'm a sucker for a well printed book.

i have them organized as such:
art monographs by artist, compilations at the end by alphabetical order
photography by artist
architecture by name, compilations, GA, EL Croquis
magazines by date

i tend to keep all the larger books together and the smaller ones go with the other normal sized paperbacks.
it's a bit messed up at the moment because i've run out of shelf space
but i hope to have new ones soon... i designed shelves specifically for the ability to add on and for a larger monograph size.

i also designed a smaller size for paperbacks, but i haven't cut it yet on a cnc... sometimes soon hopefully though.

True, the 'luxury books' can be quite sexy. But when it comes to efficiency and organization (not to mention cost), digital can't be beat.

I don't even bother looking at magazines after the first week, just faster finding what I want online (and, often times, there are more examples, I can organize into my own PDFs, like for 'schools' or 'competitions').


I can't wait to go paperless! I'll still buy high end coffee table books, but for the average book, there is no need.

it's a shame as the knowlege within a book is palpable (or puplable if you prefer). the smell, texture the low tech approach to turning a page will be missed but with so much information out there a decent search function, minimal storage is now more important to me.

It's ironic that I consume my facebook, twitter, blogs and news on my ipad using Flipboard - a digital book format.

Oh, and my Phaidon Atlas is on my coffee table, where it belongs. It looks silly on a shelf unless the shelf is extra deep and/or tall.

Alphabetical by genre / author. But I also worked at Borders during Undergrad, so it just becomes old hat. I also do the same for DVD's and CD's. And since I worked at Target prior to that, I have my closet arranged by type and color. ROYGBIV. I know, I'm a little OCD. I'm okay with that.

hey donna--looks like i'm making my archinect rounds right behind you!

i think ikea should go ahead and rename that bookshelf the 'arkitekt'...everyone i know has one.

i turn my 'embarrassing' books around so that the spine faces the wall and they don't defile the otherwise carefully curated look of the general whole...

alot of dutch (mind) food in that fridge!

"I swear you guys, I'll be living in a yurt with my chickens before my time on this earth is up." - v. funny

my book organization fluctuates, and as i use them, they move around the shelves and in various piles, grouped one way or another --- it is a very slow dance, each step of which plays out over months --- but i kind of like the changing groupings and the migrations, which make me think about the relationships between the books in different ways

I always keep my books organized by height. It solves the oversized book issue, and I have them broken up between three groups of shelves, one set for my architecture books, one set for the ms' art & photography books, and one set for the paperbacks/fictions. As the collection expands I'm starting to consider alphabetizing for ease of locating, but for now I'm much happier with the visual order in my shelves.

i dunno, after moving country about a dozen times i really just want to trash every book i have and pack them all into a digital container.

we totally would love to have more floor area to walk on too. that would be complete bonus.

but yeah so far the digital books are not good enough to make the leap. bots' point is the tipping point, but i figure someone will work it out sooner or later...

Fiction and nonfiction go in separate rooms. Each bookcase has a broad topical area, and subjects are continuous. The sequencing tends to get biographical ion the shelf. Architecture books go in the bathroom -- neither fiction nor non-fiction, and generally needing no more than ten minutes to read.

I look forward to an IPad world more for the management of articles and journals, as well as not running out of beach reading while on the beach.

My sister in law, who is a senior editor at a major publishing house, has her books arranged by color.

All my books (arch and non-arch) are mixed up with my husband's engineering and programming books in 15" wide Billy bookcases from Ikea (we have a very small apartment). They're arranged with same-sized books on a single shelf in order to save space. Plus there are a few other things added to the mix wherever they fit in, like a little model Ferrari, a Kit Rae knife and some Invader Zim toys.

I put them 3'-0" AFF where my 2 year old can't get to them.

If they're arranged by color then they're not really organized at all unless your memory is good enough to forever remember the color of the cover.

I have yet to ever buy an e-book. But, I think at this point, any kind of reading based on book art, illustration, or classical, valuable, etc. books are a physical purchase. Collections included (I casually collect books about architecture [of course], art, baseball, odysseys, classic or original children's illustration, maybe some classic fiction...) These I arrange by topic then size. I once worked in a library. Anything else is e-reading. Anything where the book becomes more of an object or piece of art and not just media conveyed. All hail the terabyte.

Then there are the trashy airport boredom buys that start stacking up. But that's another story.

I stopped collecting books once I realized that you can buy human skeletons on the internet for cheap.

beekay, i don't arrange mine by color but your comment made me realize that i DO know most of my books by the appearance of their spine. old bookshop habit, i guess.

Nice one, eddy!

"Architecture books go in the bathroom"

Because when you run out of TP, you can wipe your ass with a monograph.

What do you archinecters do with books that are unwanted gifts, superseeded editions, plain bad reading material? Do they stay on the shelves regardless - volume over quality?

I confess to be quite ruthless with the selections that make it a permanent place on my bookshelves with no time for 'bad / boring stuff'.

Audit every few years with new arrivals. Off to the charity shop to anything that does not make the quality cut.

Probably better to charity than to the toilet to be potentialy used as emergency wipe. Those 1970's monographs are too shiny anyway for my delicate cheeks!

Journals definately don't make it to the bookshelf and rarely hang around my apaertment for more than a couple of months. If anything is suitable for the ipad, then journals / magasines are it.

I'm not sure you can fit gun clips into an iPad.

If you've ever worked in a bookstore then you'd know this is a completely valid method!

The thing that gets me is the lame trend I spot in all the design mags lately, wherein the books are shelved spine-in... what a ridiculous pretentious "aesthetical" choice. reminds me why I don't buy design mags anymore...

"I'm not sure you can fit gun clips into an iPad."

of course you can with i-gun!

All my books are in a closet bookshelf in the guestroom. I did have the unfortunate assignment of shelving all of my mother's books. I did them by category, self-help, language, bio, sci-fi, fantasy, thriller, and general fiction, and then by author in each catagory, and each series is done chronologically. She has a lot of books. I wish she'd quit buying more.

expedit for life.

My dad aquired a home library from an estate auction long before I was born. When I got my first computer (around 1987-8?) I created a database and cataloged all the books. It is on a 5" floppy disk somewhere. The books are in boxes. :(

I prefer to store my books in different types of displaying units like Literature Dispensers, then leaflet holders. those units are really cool

you can check them through a website:

Literature Dispensers | Leaflet Holders

Dude, my architecture books would squash those things.

This is the only bookshelf that I have photographed.

Uh-oh, how do I resize images again? It's been a while.

A space then "width=418" after it, before the closing brackets.

Donna Sink: Archinect's Oracle

we have 2 expedits. for price, it's not terrible. my archi-books pop out more on the birch than the black/brown. i used to have them organized by color. loved it, looked great in the living room (focal point).

then one day, a friend was trying to find a book (my collection is basically a library for friends and clients...) and couldn't find it, said i should change it by subject or country. so i changed everything to sorted by country.

of course, after i did that, he complained that the color assortment looked a lot better. and i agree, but now i know where my obscure books are without remembering what color they were.

""I'm not sure you can fit gun clips into an iPad."

of course you can with i-gun!"

Haha. I didn't realize you got it. "Magazines" is probably one of the only word in English where the "z" can't be replaced with a "s." I have no idea why you Brits hate zeds so much.

And must people don't realize/realise that magazines and magasines are two different words!

I used to store all my Architecture Books at Walden Books....you know spend a quite afternoon flipping thru Architecture Books I would never think of spending money on. Well now that they are down the Tube I guess I will have to go across the Street to Boarders Book Store. When they fail I will have to drive to New Haven and go to Abicuss Book Store, cause they also let you cruze their collection for free. They also have a much more in depth collection. I think it is because all those Yale Students have disposable cash..or their parents do.

Autobiographical

If I was an interior designer I prolly would sort them by color as the pic up above.

I organize it by subject in a shelf with glass doors, I don't like to dust my books frenquently.

I don't have an ereader yet. Lots of books are not yet available, but I am considering one soon.

X/0 ........... zzzz

don't get me started on the bastardisation of the English Language by the Americans. I have all my US authors' books transcribed to aid legibility before they grace my bookshelf.

And yes I wear my pants under my trousers,
also when I 'smoke a fag' I am not comitting homophobic murder.

I came across this today.  It made me think of this thread.

I like that althought the books would be subject to UV damage if it was real - is it real?. The temporary library in Cardiff had a play on this design but the books were too large to get home.

karl lagerfeld's bookshelf

not a fan of that stacking, access to the bottom book in a stack can be problematic