Book storage and arrangement

After over 40 years as vagabonds we will finally have a permanent church home this coming Sunday. Visit our site at www.uuhickory.org. One internal debate is the arrangement of books and bookshelves. Should shelving be fixed or stand alone, should all books be together or should RE books have their own space? How are your books arranged in your church homes?

IMO, it doesn't matter. I'd defer to the loudest voice who is willing to do the work.

Adapt to your physical space and user need. Most any arrangement can be justified. Fixed/stand alone is an aesthetic/budget and long term planning decision. Being in NC, bookcases are very affordable. I'd prefer big (7' tall) and stand alone, just in case you want to rearrange. Spread the books with the demand. Kids books in the kids room (in short bookcases); office management in the offices and so on. If lack of space is an issue, look for adjustable shelves and then shelf by height of book.

Once you decide to group items, I'd alphabetize by author in as broad of a category that you can agree.
Most users can handle it, and it reduces the maintenance.

If your collection is massive and you have alot of available staff time, then I'd might use LC or Dewey.

And as a UU, then anything can be RE including kids books and office manuels. I'd hate to be in that argument.

Flippancy aside, what does matter is that the location is cataloged if you want to find the book. That might be as simple as marking the book with an RE or K(ids) or O(ffice); or cataloging in LT or some other software. You want to know where a book might be found, and where it should be returned.

I'm hoping to put our UU Library collection here being very disappointed with the software I've been using.

RE: the above comment...I'm not sure my collection is massive but I find both LC and Dewey less than adequate so I created my own subject arrangement. LC (which I knew from my days as a college/university librarian) isn't as commonly known and Dewey is extremely weighted to Christianity/Bible..something our library has...but certainly misses the mark.

I created our own subject arrangement for the adult collection and, in true UU fashion, based it on the Chakra.

The children's books are arranged by author with some subjects pulled together: holidays, spirituality. I also plan to identify the 7 principals for the kids books to help teachers.

Arranged by Chakra! Wow--you have to share that organization with the rest of us--especially former cataloger geeks like myself.

I've got my chakra based organization posted on my profile. I did a similar color scheme when I took over the library at our church in Plano, TX...only then I used orange tape for the spirituality books since that was the biggest part of the collection and the orange roll was the thickest! :-)

When I took on the Little Rock library I decided to go with something a little more inspired and decided on the chakra. I had to make sure there was somewhere to put the Humanism stuff for our members who would not want to be grouped in with the "spirituality" stuff! It's not perfect, but what system is?

I got the colored sticky tabs/labels from Demco and so general spirituality books are White (one tab) with then specific areas have two tabs: UU books being White White, Eastern religion White Purple, Judeo/Christian White Blue, Spirituality books for children/families are White Green, Congregational/Ministerial management books are White Yellow, and Pagan/Native are White Orange.

Check out my profile for the rest of the arrangement. I draw the line at 3 different colored tapes!

I'm hoping to get the rest of the collection input/imported soon and the records cleaned up. I'm really excited about LT and so far like it so much better than the former software.