Friday, July 22, 2005
(3:45 PM) | John Emerson:
How do I organize my collection? Hah!
What resource do you keep separate from your collection because you don't want anyone to know you have it?I have nothing to hide, but it doesn't make any difference because no one enters my cave anyway.
When you take down a book for reference, how long after you finish with it does it take you to reshelve it?
As long as forever.
What books do you keep separate from your collection for easy access?
About 15-20% of them.
How do you organize your collection?
West to East in my apartment:
1. About 3-5 boxes of good books I probably never will read, which I've planned to sell for about a year.
2. About 5-6 boxes that I boxed up 2-3 years ago when I thought I might move.
3. A fair-sized pile of books I took out of those boxes when looking for a book I wanted.
4. A pile of fiction and poetry books that I like to have out -- some bought recently, and some retrieved from boxes in #3.
5. A stack of academic journals which are probably unsaleable.
6. A small pile of books which really belong to my mother.
*7. Books on Eurasian and Central Asian History
*8. Books on Chinese philosophy
*9. Chinese-language reference books
*10. Books on Buddhism
*11. Books on practical philosophy
*12. Books on military history and geography
*13. Atlasses
*14. Books on social science and philosophy, organized by category.
15. Books I really want to read but probably won't
16. Books for about 5-10 specific writing projects, some of which I will never get to.
*17. Chinese classics
*18. Reference works I frequently use -- about 10 dictionaries, mostly foreign-language, Columbia encyclopedia, World Almanac.
19. Books for current writing projects for my web site.
20. Books for a reading project I've been working on
21. Other books I've been reading recently.
22. About 20 rare books, and good books which I bought by mistake, to sell on E-bay.
The asterisked* items are vestiges of my old, semi-organized system.
At the following URL you will learned a few things about organizing a collection of dictionaries and grammars: Language Hat
