How To Organize Your Personal Library
Christians have been called “people of the Book.” By this is meant that Christians seek to govern the entirety of their lives by the Bible. It might also be said that Christians are “people of books.” As a general rule Christians are readers. This is a good thing that God has used in mighty ways for world evangelization. But the organization of those books is not an easy task.
Two of my favorite bloggers, who are also avid readers, have recently posted about how they organize their libraries.
- Tony Reinke over a The Shepherds Scrapbook details how he uses a spreadsheet to organize his books and other media.
- Tim Challies over at Challies Dot Com details how he uses Library Thing to organize his books.
As for me, I put a good bit of time into Library Thing about two years ago but have not kept it up since. I really need to sit down and catch up on two years of book accumulation. If I get around to it, I’ll post a link to my library in the sidebar. As for physical organization I have the following categories: commentaries canonically ordered, Puritans, Edwards, Princeton men, biographies, Scottish divines, Southern Presbyterians, Church History, creeds, and about two bookshelves full of everything else.
I have been intrigued by two other methods of physical organization: by author and by chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith. I however don’t predict any major changes in my organizational scheme in the near future.
How do you organize your books?
