Organizing Books

In today’s world, with the mass production of millions of books, and a literacy rate of virtually 100% in many places, the issue of organizing books, primarily in private and public libraries, becomes very important. There are a number of commonly accepted library classification systems in use in modern libraries, and these make the task of storing, organizing, and finding books much easier and more convenient.

In the English-speaking world, the most commonly used systems of library classification are the Dewey Decimal System (also known as Dewey Decimal Classification, or DCC), invented by Melvil Dewey in the late 19th century, as well as the Bliss bibliographic Classification or BC, and the Library of Congress Classification, or LCC. There are also other classification systems in use, in languages other than English.

There are a number of important criteria involved with the creation of these library classification systems, which are also useful in comparing these systems. Among them are included the system’s simplicity, consistency and brevity, as well as expressiveness, as notation type (which can be simple, i.e. just numerals, or more complicated, also containing letters and symbols).

These rather complex systems of classification are very useful for extensive libraries, both private and public. But even if you don’t have your own library, chances are that you have a good number of books, so you do need some type of organization. Depending on how many books you have, and how diverse their genres are, it may be helpful to organize your books alphabetically by author, by title, or perhaps by genre.