Home Library Shelving Considerations

There are a number of differences between a home library and a public library. Obviously, there is the difference of ownership, which is to say that a public library is, well, public, while your home library (assumedly) is not. However, there is another difference that may seem obvious, but has deeper intricacies that on may not see at first. That difference is space.

The average public library is, obviously, quite a bit larger than your average private library. Now, the most obvious reaction to this problem is to simply have less material to store. That is a valid method, to a point, but there is something else to consider as well: the efficiency of your home library shelving. Your home library shelving is, quite literally, the lynchpin of your entire space. It will be the behind the scenes dictator of every other decision you make for the room.

Home library shelving has to make the most of the space you have. This means fitting as many books as possible into as little space as possible. Of course, there is a problem with efficiency when it comes to books. That problem, of course, is that not all books are the same size. In fact, the sizes vary greatly, from small paperback volumes to great tomes that can be quite large. Now, the first answer is to make your shelving to hold any size, by making all shelves able to handle said massive volumes. The other answer, though, is to vary the sizes of books that your shelves can hold. One side of the room might, for instance, have shelves that hold smaller books, while the other holds the larger books.

The problem there is in organization. If you make your home library shelving all manners of different sizes, then you will be forced to put books wherever they fit, which is obviously not the best of methods from an organizational standpoint. If, for instance, you have a number of small books on a given subject, and only one or two larger books on the subject, well then you may just find yourself up a creek without a proverbial paddle. Your large books will end up on a different shelf from your smaller ones.

There are two ways to combat this problem. The first is to arrange your home library shelving in such a way that your subjects are divided among each of the sizes. For instance, each wall has shelves of a different size, and the books on each subject are in the same relative place on each of the walls. So, if you want a large book on geography, you know it will be around the same place in the large bookshelves as the geography books are on the smaller bookshelves. The other is to make a few exceptions. While larger books do not fir in smaller areas of your home library shelving, the same is not true in reverse. If you have only a few smaller books and a number of larger books on a subject, simply move the smaller books to the larger shelves.