Shelving and Cataloging
- Thread starter Osquevel
- Start date
I like to think that I'm older and wiser now.
Also, I think Marco marked my address as a spam source.
Also, I think Marco marked my address as a spam source.
Actually, we all have.....
I had an inkling Pocket regretted the numbering when ST IV came out without a number. It seemed, until then, that there was a commitment to keeping all the books in print (including TMP, which surely holds some kind of publishing record for a movie novelization?).
After ST IV, some of the earlier titles started to slip out of print and the mail order page was more like a "best of". Coincidence maybe, but I was also bewildered by the retro numbering of the first 15 Pocket TOS books. It probably seemed like a great idea at the time. Many collectors hate gaps in their numbering.
Having said that, abandoning the numbers just before reaching TOS #100 was a shame, too. A lost marketing strategy. Maybe someone thought many collectors would bail at #100?
Yes, that's right. I killed the TOS numbering. I killed it to death!!
Yeah, The Last Roundup was originally going to be a Diane Carey trilogy as I recall. It was probably going to kick off "a bold new direction" or somesuch, too.
But, did you take its brain!!!!!!!
My top shelf has the trades/anthologies/whatever (MU, MyU, Tales of/from, Art of Gen/FC, and the Starfleet Survival Guide)
Second Shelf is DS9R chronologically (A Stitch in Time -> Fearful Symmetry) and VOYR 1-4 on the other end, with DSTs DS9 figures in front of them.
Third shelf is for TNGR (A Time To...->Destiny), with TTN 1-4 on the other end and DSTs TNG figs in front of them.
NF has its own shelf in order, including the Double Time one-shot comic (I still need to order the new TPB), plus the AA Enterprise-E.
The Shatnerverse has shelf five to itself, along with AA's Enterprise-A and the first edition of the classic phaser.
The sporadic numbered books I have are in numerical order by series (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY) down on the bottom shelf, along with the miniseries/crossovers.
Second Shelf is DS9R chronologically (A Stitch in Time -> Fearful Symmetry) and VOYR 1-4 on the other end, with DSTs DS9 figures in front of them.
Third shelf is for TNGR (A Time To...->Destiny), with TTN 1-4 on the other end and DSTs TNG figs in front of them.
NF has its own shelf in order, including the Double Time one-shot comic (I still need to order the new TPB), plus the AA Enterprise-E.
The Shatnerverse has shelf five to itself, along with AA's Enterprise-A and the first edition of the classic phaser.
The sporadic numbered books I have are in numerical order by series (TOS, TNG, DS9, VOY) down on the bottom shelf, along with the miniseries/crossovers.
I don't believe it was ever said that Golden's TOS hardcover was the same proposed storyline as Carey's MMPB trilogy. Probably John Ordover just liked the title.
I have three bookcases filled with Trek books. First are the stand-alones and miniseries that don't correspond with any particular Trek series, such as Badlands, the Brave and Bold, Dark Passions, Day of Honor, Dominion War, Destiny, Eugenics Wars, Excelsior, Gateways, Lost Era, Mirror Universe, Myriad Universe, New Frontier, Shatnerverse, Starfleet Corps of Engineers, Starfleet Year One, Section 31, Stargazer, Strange New Worlds, Tales of Dominion War, Titan, and Vanguard.
Some of you may (and will) argue that these books should be properly placed with x-series, and I welcome any suggestions. Only for reasons of keeping them alphabetically ordered by miniseries title do I keep them like this, and if you think they properly belong with TOS, TNG, etc, please recommend.
Next are the TOS books...the twelve old Blish books, followed by the ten Alan Dean Foster Logs, then old TOS books from the 70s (World Without End, Trouble With Tribbles), the two New Voyages books, the numbered series, then the stand-alone novels (Best Destiny to Vulcan's Heart, alpha by title rather than by chronological order).
The TNG books, with the anthology The Sky's The Limit first, followed by the numbered series, then stand-alone novels in alpha order (All Good Things to Vendetta, and I put the nine A Time To... books in here as well in alpha order, as well as the relaunch books).
The DS9 books, numbered series first, then stand-alones (Far Beyond The Stars to What You Leave Behind), followed by the DS9-related Millenium trilogy, the Terok Nor trilogy, and the three Worlds of DS9 books.
The Voyager books, numbered series first, then stand-alones (Day of Honor to Spirit Walk 2).
The Enterprise books, in alpha order from Broken Bow to What Price Honor.
Thanks to both the Voyages In Imagination book and threads in Trek Lit giving dates of books, I could if I wish place all of the books into some chronological order, but that would throw my sorting system into disarray. Does anyone (did anyone) catalogue their books chronologically, without regard to keeping the series separate?
are the TOS books, organized as so...the twelve old Blish books, followed by the ten Alan Dean Foster Logs, then old books from the 70s (Trouble With Tribbles, World Without End), then the numbered series, then the stand-alone
Some of you may (and will) argue that these books should be properly placed with x-series, and I welcome any suggestions. Only for reasons of keeping them alphabetically ordered by miniseries title do I keep them like this, and if you think they properly belong with TOS, TNG, etc, please recommend.
Next are the TOS books...the twelve old Blish books, followed by the ten Alan Dean Foster Logs, then old TOS books from the 70s (World Without End, Trouble With Tribbles), the two New Voyages books, the numbered series, then the stand-alone novels (Best Destiny to Vulcan's Heart, alpha by title rather than by chronological order).
The TNG books, with the anthology The Sky's The Limit first, followed by the numbered series, then stand-alone novels in alpha order (All Good Things to Vendetta, and I put the nine A Time To... books in here as well in alpha order, as well as the relaunch books).
The DS9 books, numbered series first, then stand-alones (Far Beyond The Stars to What You Leave Behind), followed by the DS9-related Millenium trilogy, the Terok Nor trilogy, and the three Worlds of DS9 books.
The Voyager books, numbered series first, then stand-alones (Day of Honor to Spirit Walk 2).
The Enterprise books, in alpha order from Broken Bow to What Price Honor.
Thanks to both the Voyages In Imagination book and threads in Trek Lit giving dates of books, I could if I wish place all of the books into some chronological order, but that would throw my sorting system into disarray. Does anyone (did anyone) catalogue their books chronologically, without regard to keeping the series separate?
are the TOS books, organized as so...the twelve old Blish books, followed by the ten Alan Dean Foster Logs, then old books from the 70s (Trouble With Tribbles, World Without End), then the numbered series, then the stand-alone
Reading elsewhere in this thread, I see mention made of non-Trek book sequencing and cataloging. I have mine sorted by Military Fiction (Tom Clancy, et al), Nuclear War (stand-alones), Nuclear War Series (Deathlands, etc), Science Fiction (anthologies and short stories separate from stand-alone sci-fi and those separate from sci-fi series such as many of Turtledove's books), Disaster, Horror, Classics, World War II and Vietnam (both fiction and fact), Architecture, and Movies (movie adaptations, a guilty pleasure...). Also have a large contingent of military factual books of various sizes.
Gathering all of this crap over the years, I began to realize I would run out of bookcase shelf space if I didn't make some adjustments. My office takes up half of our unfinished basement, so it wasn't really a question of not having enough bookcases or places to put them, but making the maximum use of each bookcase. I drew up plans to make my own bookcases, sizing them to hold the maximum amount of books, but as these are called hands solely because of the position they occupy at the ends of my arms, and if you put tools in them you are just asking for trouble, I decided to go a different route.
Over a period of several months, I purchased fourteen bookcases. Thirteen of them were assembled and ring the perimeter of my office, and each bookcase originally as assembled had five shelves, with one below and two above a permanently-fixed shelf about one-third of the way up from the bottom shelf, which is fixed as the base. I measured the open space above and below the fixed shelf, and screwed L-shaped brackets into the sides of the cases at roughly ten-inch intervals, giving me three shelves above the fixed shelf, and leaving the one below the fixed, for six-shelf bookcases. Of the thirteen assembled, three were left shelfless after cannibalizing their shelves for the other ten. The fourteenth I carefully measured and cut up, to create "shelves" for the three shelfless ones. Not neat, but effective for the purpose.
This was before I discovered to my dismay that I could have simply ordered additional shelves from Sauder...but you live and you learn.
The bottommost movable shelf was moved up to accomodate just enough book space for mass markets and trades, and leaves about a foot of space for larger books, the aforementioned military fact and architecture books (which tend to be big hardbound books), binders and my work materials, old RPG stuff from games I used to play back in The Day but never will again but don't want to get rid of for sentimental reasons, etc.
I admit I did not leave space in my shelving for trade paperbacks, but was relieved to find that my system did after all accomodate trades quite nicely, with plenty of room to get them out without having to use a screwdriver.
And, yes, I have been diagnosed with OCD...
Gathering all of this crap over the years, I began to realize I would run out of bookcase shelf space if I didn't make some adjustments. My office takes up half of our unfinished basement, so it wasn't really a question of not having enough bookcases or places to put them, but making the maximum use of each bookcase. I drew up plans to make my own bookcases, sizing them to hold the maximum amount of books, but as these are called hands solely because of the position they occupy at the ends of my arms, and if you put tools in them you are just asking for trouble, I decided to go a different route.
Over a period of several months, I purchased fourteen bookcases. Thirteen of them were assembled and ring the perimeter of my office, and each bookcase originally as assembled had five shelves, with one below and two above a permanently-fixed shelf about one-third of the way up from the bottom shelf, which is fixed as the base. I measured the open space above and below the fixed shelf, and screwed L-shaped brackets into the sides of the cases at roughly ten-inch intervals, giving me three shelves above the fixed shelf, and leaving the one below the fixed, for six-shelf bookcases. Of the thirteen assembled, three were left shelfless after cannibalizing their shelves for the other ten. The fourteenth I carefully measured and cut up, to create "shelves" for the three shelfless ones. Not neat, but effective for the purpose.
This was before I discovered to my dismay that I could have simply ordered additional shelves from Sauder...but you live and you learn.
The bottommost movable shelf was moved up to accomodate just enough book space for mass markets and trades, and leaves about a foot of space for larger books, the aforementioned military fact and architecture books (which tend to be big hardbound books), binders and my work materials, old RPG stuff from games I used to play back in The Day but never will again but don't want to get rid of for sentimental reasons, etc.
I admit I did not leave space in my shelving for trade paperbacks, but was relieved to find that my system did after all accomodate trades quite nicely, with plenty of room to get them out without having to use a screwdriver.
And, yes, I have been diagnosed with OCD...
I do that with the books and comics I count in my personal continuity. Others are arranged by series, author, and publication date (or series, publisher, and date for comics).
I have two shelves dedicated to Trek exclusively. I don't mix trek books with other books
...One shelf has all my original series books and mini-series like Gateways, Double Helix (even though it occured in the run of TNG books), Destiny, The Lost Era, The Captain's Table, and The Dominion War. This shelf also has my HC's and my trek graphic novels. The other shelf holds TNG, DS9, VOY, Titan, New Frontier, Vanguard, Klingon Empire, Stargazer, all my various anthologies, and of course, KRAD's Articles of the Federation (...and A Singular Destiny soon enough
). I try to shelf the books in order of the timeline within the given series. I find it best when deciding what to read/re-read next...
...One shelf has all my original series books and mini-series like Gateways, Double Helix (even though it occured in the run of TNG books), Destiny, The Lost Era, The Captain's Table, and The Dominion War. This shelf also has my HC's and my trek graphic novels. The other shelf holds TNG, DS9, VOY, Titan, New Frontier, Vanguard, Klingon Empire, Stargazer, all my various anthologies, and of course, KRAD's Articles of the Federation (...and A Singular Destiny soon enough). I try to shelf the books in order of the timeline within the given series. I find it best when deciding what to read/re-read next...
Well, now that I've pulled most of my books out of storage, I can display them again. 
I've got it mostly displayed by series, though with two exceptions.
- When I get more than AotF, I'll have the general 2380s books (AotF, Destiny, ASD) as their own separate series, because I'm just that anal about keeping the other series together.
- The novels set during The Lost Era will be with the "actual" Lost Era novels as well. I did have The Buried Age, but I've got no clue what I did with it, and I'm quite annoyed with myself about that one.
I've got it mostly displayed by series, though with two exceptions.
- When I get more than AotF, I'll have the general 2380s books (AotF, Destiny, ASD) as their own separate series, because I'm just that anal about keeping the other series together.
- The novels set during The Lost Era will be with the "actual" Lost Era novels as well. I did have The Buried Age, but I've got no clue what I did with it, and I'm quite annoyed with myself about that one.
I have run out of bookcases (and my parents refuse to let me assimilate any further rooms into my library), so I have one very tall bookcase dedicated to Trek fiction. All the numbered books are organized by series by number (TNG, then DS9, then Voyager, then NF), with special series like Captain's Table separate. The very bottom shelf has all the books like the Encyclopedia, the Chronology, Aliens of the Federation. Now I'm clear out of shelf space and am employing two methods: double-shelving, with any attempt at order abandoned (they do get stacked by size, so the MU and Myriad Universes anthologies are stacked with the last SCE omnibus.) Most of the hardcovers are stacked on top of the bookshelf, and the YA books are in a shoebox at the base of the bookshelf. The two NF comics I own are also on top of the bookshelf.
(My overall library has a general organization, in that there are sections - "Biology," "Physics," "Classics" (as in books about Classical Civilization), "Classics" (as in, great authors of literature, along with related commentary/scholarship), "British History," "American History," "General History," and "Other" (with Other encompassing things that don't readily fall into other categories, which especially tend to include memoirs, but also include things like a book by the New York Times perfume columnist and a Movies in Fifteen Minutes parody book.) and then fiction on separate shelves. There's one fiction shelf for a hodgepodge of sci-fi/fantasy/horror: my Tolkien, Lewis, Pullman, Anne Rice and L.J Smith books, along with some classic sci-fi (War of the Worlds, Fahrenheit 451, etc.). There's also a larger shelf for the rest of my fiction (mostly historical, some contemporary; and I try to keep it organized by author, but since I also try to keep them stacked by size, it's not always possible. Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is the example I keep thinking of.) If I had more room, I could get a more precise system going, but as it is I can generally find whatever I'm looking for whenever I want it.
For cataloguing, I use LibraryThing (www.librarything.com). It cost $25 dollars for a lifetime membership with unlimited cataloguing, and allows me to add books by entering just the title. It's searchable, you can rate the books, add tags to allow for easier searching, etc. It's also a social site, so you can look at other peoples' libraries and they can see yours, and it does things like suggests "based on what you own, here's what you might like..." (along with a, "based on what you own, you'll probably hate...") It's much better than my previous effort at cataloguing (which was a Word document.)
(My overall library has a general organization, in that there are sections - "Biology," "Physics," "Classics" (as in books about Classical Civilization), "Classics" (as in, great authors of literature, along with related commentary/scholarship), "British History," "American History," "General History," and "Other" (with Other encompassing things that don't readily fall into other categories, which especially tend to include memoirs, but also include things like a book by the New York Times perfume columnist and a Movies in Fifteen Minutes parody book.) and then fiction on separate shelves. There's one fiction shelf for a hodgepodge of sci-fi/fantasy/horror: my Tolkien, Lewis, Pullman, Anne Rice and L.J Smith books, along with some classic sci-fi (War of the Worlds, Fahrenheit 451, etc.). There's also a larger shelf for the rest of my fiction (mostly historical, some contemporary; and I try to keep it organized by author, but since I also try to keep them stacked by size, it's not always possible. Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series is the example I keep thinking of.) If I had more room, I could get a more precise system going, but as it is I can generally find whatever I'm looking for whenever I want it.
For cataloguing, I use LibraryThing (www.librarything.com). It cost $25 dollars for a lifetime membership with unlimited cataloguing, and allows me to add books by entering just the title. It's searchable, you can rate the books, add tags to allow for easier searching, etc. It's also a social site, so you can look at other peoples' libraries and they can see yours, and it does things like suggests "based on what you own, here's what you might like..." (along with a, "based on what you own, you'll probably hate...") It's much better than my previous effort at cataloguing (which was a Word document.)
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SicOne, I have my ST books arranged chronologically by series, except for hardcovers and anthologies which are on their own. The novel only series are next followed by the standalones. I don't have enough shelf space for everything especially as I have just got a delivery of 86 TNG, DS9, VOY, NF and miniseries books. So I will have to sort them out again.
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