When all was said and done, I got quite a bit more than a “book corner” so I’m ecstatic. There is a full WALL devoted to books. There are about six bookcases, with three shelves each … and then one smaller one on either end. There are also two bookcases that act as “bookends” (if you will) for the computer bank … which has no computers. And they even managed to give me some shelf space around the pillar in the middle of the room—great spot for featured books!
Construction complete! Time to put books on shelves!
We transported books from the old library to the new library this weekend. Since I don’t have much space now, it’s all about quality not quantity. And since there’s only 19 shelves to fill (I think my personal library in boxes in my mother-in-law’s basement would fill these shelves) I decided to do away with the Dewey Decimal System.
GASP!
I know, I know … but honestly … it just makes everything look WEIRD. Instead, I’m going for the bookstore approach. That is, the “genre” approach. I divided the library in half – Nonfiction and Fiction. And that leaves room for a shelf of encyclopedias, a shelf for dictionaries/thesauruses/almanacs/atlases, a shelf for science books, a shelf for biographies, a shelf for social sciences, a shelf for oversized books with gorgeous photographs, a shelf for Pacific Studies, a shelf for religion and a shelf for literary non-fiction. Then, on the Fiction side, there’s the Literary Classics shelf, the Juvenile Classics shelf, the Easy Reading shelf, the Science Fiction and Fantasy shelf, the Drama and Romance shelvzzzzz (plural), the Mystery and Suspense shelf, the Action and Adventure shelf, and our paltry Poetry shelf. (heh. alliteration. poetry joke. nevermind.)
When we went through the old library I was really surprised … Who knew there were so many good books buried in those shelves stuffed with mediocrity? Once we started weeding through we found some real gems … Time Life Series science books, a lot more classics than I thought, a really great set of short and reading-level-appropriate biographies, plus a Pacific Studies section that’s worth an honorable mention.
On the other hand, putting the books on the new shelves, without the Dewey Decimal Aystem, made it really easy to see where the weaknesses are in the collection. (THREE books on art?!? FOUR books of poetry?!?) I was grasping at straws to find ANY “action and adventure” stories. And other than three random J.R.R. Tolkien novels (not The Lord of the Rings) and an incomplete set of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, oh, and three Animorphs books … there really is NOT a “Science Fiction and Fantasy” shelf. So … I have some scavenging to do. :)
I’m going to do a full inventory before school starts, so I can post a public Amazon.com “wish list.” Then we can complete some of those sets and infuse the collection with a little bit of life.
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