[guspasho]

I'm wondering if there are more efficient and useful ways to sort books in to collections than what I thought of alone, and I'm curious what everyone else has come up with. Of course your collections are going to be specific to your library, but maybe your system has some particular insight.

I realize that collections are tags and try to take advantage of that, but some of my collections can have a few dozen books in them, especially if the category is broad enough.

Here's my system, though it needs work (hense the topic):

Chuck Palahniuk (12)
Classic Literature (31)
Conan (4)
Cthulhu Mythos (9)
David Eddings (15)
Dune (6)
Fantasy (90)
Humor (9)
J.K. Rowling (8)
The Malazan Book of the Fallen (9)
Middle-earth (6)
Modern Literature (18)
Moorcock (8)
Non-fiction (55)
Pulp Fiction (30)
Science (33)
Science Fiction (21)
The Wheel of Time (13)

I divide classical and modern lit somewhere in the 1950s. Hemingway is classical, Arthur Miller is modern. Pulp fiction encompasses stuff like Sherlock Holmes, the Cthulhu mythos books, Conan books, King Solomon's Mines, that sort of stuff, which I don't consider literature. I don't think literature and fiction are synonymous. Literature is important, the rest of fiction is just fun. (I'm not looking for an argument, I'm just saying that's how I do it.) Some collections are just sub-collections of Fantasy. And similarly, everything in science is also in non-fiction.

The whole setup seems kind of ramshackle to me. Have you put a lot of thought in to your collections? And what sorts of systems and rules did you come up with? I'd love to know. Thanks!