It's National Shelfie Day!

It's Shelfie Day! Started by the New York Public Library almost a decade ago, Shelfie Day is an occasion for showing off the beauty of books, and the creative ways we shelve and display them.

In honor of the occasion, a few LT staff members are posting some shelfies of their own, using the shelfie and ltshelfie tags.

One of my shelfies:



A brief description of my library:

My library is dominated by children’s books—my consuming passion—and works of children’s literature criticism. My masters is in children’s literature, and I have a bookcase devoted entirely to studies of the subject and of specific children’s authors, and to reference works about children’s books. This bookcase is organized thematically.

I have two bookcases devoted to children’s fantasy fiction, shelved alphabetically by author’s last name, and a massive three-book deep bookcase devoted to rare and vintage children’s fiction, also shelved by author’s last name. The latter is actually one half of a closet, and was initially intended as additional storage for clothing (but who needs more of that?). I have another bookcase that is roughly split between more vintage children’s fiction (not terribly well organized) and my witchy picture books, and one more that is devoted exclusively to folklore—half picture book retellings, and half folklore collections—that is organized by cultural origin. This is the bookcase I am sitting in front of, in my shelfie!

All of these bookcases are split between the bedroom and living room of my house, but I also have 1.5 bookcases in our attic—one case devoted to additional children’s books, and a half case containing my adult books (some non-fiction, all of my language instructions books, and my Georgette Heyer collection) that I split with my mother.

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Come take a look at the LibraryThing shelfies uploaded so far, and add some of your own, in your member gallery. Be sure to use the "shelfie" and "ltshelfie" tags, so your fellow members can see those shelfies as well.

While you're at it, tell us a little bit about your library—what it contains, how you organize it, any bookish treasures you're particularly proud of.

My library is mostly literature; almost 2/3 fiction vs. non-fiction. Specifically within fiction, two of my favorite authors are Stephen King and Haruki Murakami. I've been reading more thrillers/mysteries and science fiction lately. I also own a lot of kids' books, due to having an almost-6-year-old. As far as my Non-Fiction, it seems to be fairly evenly spread among different genres. Within Non-Fiction, I mostly enjoy biography and memoirs, particularly when they're graphic novels! All my books are cataloged using the DDC system!

Well, I tried, but for some reason they all came out sideways or upside down when I uploaded them to my gallery!

Okay, for some reason, uploading them to Flickr and then downloading them to my computer, and then uploading them to my gallery worked. So:



The shelves on the right are three sections, somewhat wider than the ones you see on the left. These are all mostly literature, books on books, women's studies and lw boks. The shorter shelves on the left are Ikea Billy bookcases, and have paperback literature, Italian books, some architecture. What you don't see are a couple of tall freestanding cases in my study (Judaica, theology, music & theatre, pop-ups, more architecture), two freestanding cases in my dining room (cookbooks and gastronomy), and three at the other end of my living room (Chicago books, lots more architecture, fashion, Japan, Italy). And then there are the piles on the floor, coffee table, pretty much any flat surface.

I tend to read a lot of fiction books, but since I often get those from the library, my collection contains a variety of other kinds of books. I have 2 bookcases, both of which are loosely organized. My main bookcase (seen in my shelfie) contains a mix of smaller fiction, nonfiction, and notebooks, with larger, more “visual” books and graphic novels on the bottom shelf. The only truly organized bit is the top shelf, which has all of my poetry books. My other bookcase contains my larger reference books, cookbooks, and a random assortment of other books. I really want to re-organize my collection soon, and especially would like to find a home on the shelf for my zine collection, which is currently tucked away in a file folder and needs to be cataloged.

Our library is in the process of being rebuilt, so the shelves are empty and the books are all in boxes. I'll have to forgo the photo-op until after its complete...

I saw that on Instagram and posed for mine.



And posted a few pictures on Instagram in honor of the day

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2fYZEbxMa-/?igsh=MXRlZzk5bDVhZW8zeQ==

I’ve been taking stock of my shelves recently. Lots of picture books and children’s chapter books, a whole lot of visual arts materials, history, theology, gardening and science. Science fiction and fantasy. But I think I have more books classified as pre-1950 fiction than anything else.

You may have seen this thread that I happened to start a week or so ago:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/357405

Here's one I think I'll use for a profile pic for a while. It shows me in front of the rightmost of five cases of fiction and literary books in the main living area, where there are also a couple of cases for history. A tall case for religion and psychology is in the hallway, and the study has two cases of weird/horror fiction and five of esotericism and occult books. A small case near the desk has bibles and liturgical studies. The bedroom has an overhead rail along one wall full of mass-market paperbacks, including a lot of Ballantine Adult Fantasy and yellow-spine DAW SF.

We moved here just six months ago. The books got shelved in the first few weeks--although there are still some boxes in storage.