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how would you categorize the books?
I'm making a spreadsheet for our library collection. I would love to import it eventually into a access database, but I'm so far from knowing how to do that right now!
I'm struggling with wanting too many categories. I'm not doing dewy decimal (good grief-I'm not insane! just crazy!)
My books (or the more adult readers and parent books, etc) are easy, what I'm struggling with is the kids' books.

So far I have easy readers, juvenile fiction, juvenile mystery, juvenile history, poetry, picture books, board books, craft books, graphic novels, (aka comic books) Christian, Bible study, devotionals, curriculum, and textbook. I am trying to think like a librarian! Plus I'm trying to follow the genres in DITHOR to make it easier for the boys to find an appropriate book.

What I'm worried about is putting Captain Underpants next to Bedtime for Francis. You know, mixing the twaddle with the classics? OF course, it's like that in the library, too, I suppose. *and I hate to admit how much twaddle we have...now that I SEE it in black and white...)

I'm thinking about it too hard, aren't I???

Hi Darci,

What I have done is taken the general dewy decimal and implemented it...you know 200, 300, 400 etc. I was insane enough ONCE to try to break it down smaller , but soon wizened up This has helped me to place books that I wasnt sure whether they would go with history or science and it keeps each subject together. I do have my Caldecott & Newberry Honor books separate from the rest of my fiction as well my landmark books (I collect the old hardcover editions) My EJ picture books are in one section, biographies in another....but I do mix historical and regular ficition . merhahaha.

I also have a parent teacher section where I keep my Charlotte Mason, WTM ATTA etc....and a shelf for textbooks/workbooks that we are not currently using (the ones we are using are kept in drawer next to my desk...or in the child's school bin)

I hope this helps and hasnt made you more confused.

Kay in PA

thank you! that's what I was trying to do, too. I was looking up books on the library of congress site to see where they had them categorized! that was VERY time consuming!
You rebel! mixing the books up like that!!

Instead of using my own spread sheet or database, I've used librarything.com to store all our books. It's a great way to organize your books and it has a search tool on it so you can search for the book title, or in my case, I can search under each curriculum to find all the books for that program. The best part is that you only have to enter the ISBN for each book and it will automatically pull up all the info on file at the Library of Congress for the book. The service is free for the first 200 books.