TL;DR: How do you sort your books for your book server?


I’m thinking of reworking my eBook/comic/etc library, and I’m curious how other people structure things.

I don’t want to separate fiction out by genre or anything since some can fit multiple genres, so I’m leaning towards Dewey decimal system categories personally.

I’m also planning a bit ahead since my daughter is now starting to read more than sight words books, so I’m thinking of separating kids fiction and adult fiction.

I also currently have a section for comics, manga, and LNs. Those are separated mostly for who goes to what, and what they do/don’t want to read. So my library right now (plus the kids section) will look like:

  • Kids Fiction
  • Adult Fiction
  • Comics
  • Manga
  • Light/Web Novels
  • Non-Fiction

Simple for navigation, and searchable, but maybe not the best for browsing. So I was thinking maybe the Dewey categories:

  • Computer Science, Knowledge, and Systems
  • Philosophy & Psychology
  • Social Sciences
  • Language
  • Science
  • Technology
  • Arts
  • Adult Fiction
  • Kids Fiction
  • History/Geography

Nicely browsable, but some of those sections will be really light on books.

What method of sorting do you use? Any librarians out there with thoughts on better approaches than the Dewey decimal system?

EDIT: I really like what @thayer@lemmy.ca mentioned, which I’ve currently adapted to:

  • Instructional (How-to, manuals, gardening, etc)
  • Tech (Electronics reference materials, programming reference books, etc).
  • Equine (all my wife’s horse stuff)
  • Kids Fiction
  • Kids Non-Fiction (I’ve got some geography books and such my daughter likes, I’m sure it will expand over time)
  • Adult Fiction
  • Adult Non-Fiction
  • Comics
  • Manga
  • LN/WN

I can easily allow the kids accounts to have access to the Kids section, not include the comics/manga/tech my wife has no interest in, etc.

  • curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    2 months ago

    Kavita does that, which is what I use (though through the web interface, not using opds on an android app for example), but it would still make browsing just a giant single list.

    And I agree, fuzzy has value, which is why I don’t want to separate major things like Science Fiction vs Fantasy. But there isn’t exactly going to be significant overlap between historical romance novels and an instructional book on erlang, so that book on erlang is just going to get lost in the library.

    That’s why I separate, it’s just too much for a single large directory.