By
Mark Jensen
This is Part Four of our Six Part Series on Magic Book Collecting. Once again, when I refer to book, I mean books, lecture notes and periodicals unless I state otherwise.
Organization
Once you settle on what subjects you want to focus on and the space you have for your books, you need to consider how you will organize them. For years I had less than 100 books in my library. I had them all on one bookcase, organized by book height. The shelves looked nice and with so few books, I knew where every book was on the shelf if I wanted to look something up in it. Then one day my insurance agent said I needed a list of my books if I wanted them covered by my policy. So I set up an excel spreadsheet to list each book. I originally entered the following information: Author Last Name, First Name, Title, Year Published, Price Paid, and Current Value. I had a separate tab set up for books, lecture notes, pamphlets and periodicals. For years this worked fine for me.
Today it no longer meets my needs. I am now updating to capture additional information such as publisher, edition, binding type, condition, subject, location (bookcase, filing cabinet, etc) and general comments. I am still using excel, but am considering possibly moving to a database.
I am also reorganizing my bookcases by subject and sub-topic so it is easier to find specific volumes. Within each subject/sub-topic, I am organizing the books alphabetically by author. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. For example, I have a few books that are part of a multivolume set. The first 4 volumes are by one author, the fifth by a different author. I have put them all together for practical purposes.
You should also keep your hardbound books separate from your softbound books. They could be on the same shelf, but shouldn’t be mixed. This is to avoid two potential causes of damage. Damage due to the pressures exerted by each book on its neighbor while sitting on the shelf and the damage that can happen to the weaker softbound covers as books are removed and replaced on the shelf.
When placing books on their shelves, don’t pack them in too tight as this can damage the covers. I recommend using 80 – 90 % of the shelf space. This allows your books to breath, avoids damage when removing them and allows room for growth as you add new books to your library.
What if you want to place some softbound books or pamphlets among your hardbound books on your book shelf? You have two options, you can either get clamshell book boxes or shelf files to put them in. These can be labeled so you can tell what is in them, yet they protect your softbound books and pamphlets. I did this for my spiral bound Workers Series by Mike Close.
I keep my lecture notes and most pamphlets in a filing cabinet. They are organized alphabetically by author’s last name.
As mentioned previously, I keep my periodicals in magazine boxes and binders. Each issue is placed in an archival sleeve. Once again, which I do is based on the size of the issues. For example, I keep my Genii and Magic Magazines in boxes while my Alter Flame issues in a binder.
ow that your library is nice and organized it’s time to talk about the proper way to care and handle your books. I will discuss that next month. Until then…Happy Collecting.
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