Photo Tour of My Home Library Project (Spring 2025)

How I reorganized my home library according to the Dewey Decimal System

What can you do with a three day weekend?

What about reorganizing your books according the Dewey Decimal System?

Since books are one of my special interests, I thought this made sense. So I ended up devoting most of last weekend to the project. Photo tour and how-to follows!

The lovely Luna appears in five pics, but you have to scroll through to see them all :)

1. Welcome to our library tour!

2. Please come in!

About the System

This is a loose adaptation of Dewey’s system. There are no numbered subdivisions or stickers (unless the book is ex-library and came with one). Instead, I organized according to Dewey’s primary categories (100s to 900s) followed by subtopics—e.g. Philosophy (100s) > Consciousness, Dreams, Jung, etc. This is fine for a small home library. Alphabetized subtopics weren’t even needed in most of my sections.

3. Philosophy (100s). Includes metaphysics, psychology (dreams, neurobiology & Jung), parapsychology (consciousness, the paranormal, etc.) and occult (a bit of tarot). Very little actual philosophy in this collection!

4. Philosophy (100s) cont. Some of my parapsychology books were too tall for this bookcase and ended up in Oversized. I bought this bookcase at the flea market. It’s a very near match to my grandfather’s old bookcase (images 1 & 11.)

5. Library table. Some reference and symbolism books are kept here. On the other side of the bushes is a very busy street (happily I have noise-cancelling earbuds).

6. 200s to 800s. From left to right: Religion (200s), Language (400s), Science (500-600s), Art & Recreation (700s), Oversized (all sections) and Literature (800s). Not a lot here in the way of pure science or recreation and no 300s at all! Shelves built by me and my kids.

7. Mix of antique books at the top of the 200s. I couldn’t get a good shot of the rest of this section because it’s kind of behind my desk but you can see it from a distance in images 2 and 6. It’s mostly Judeo-Christian with older religions (Mesopotamia, Celtic, etc.) in the history section.

8. 200-800s cont. Not our prettiest books but this is how it ended up. Religion spillover (200s), Language (400s), Science and Tech (500s-600s), Art & Rec (700s), Oversized.

9. 200s-800s cont. Oversized books that belong in the 100s including some parapsychology which probably should be in science anyway (given changes in the field since the 1870s).

10. 200s-800s cont. Literature (800s). Some of my favorites. Cecelia Holland historical fiction (top) and an entire shelf of vampire stories. Some actual literature but mostly not.

11. History 900s. I have included some mythology (even though Dewey puts it in Philosophy) and a few random books and binders. This was my grandfather’s bookcase. The glass is up here but, when it’s down, it closely matches the image 4 bookcase.

12. History (900s) close up. It was hard to see the top shelf in the previous pic. This completes the library circuit.

13. Thank you for visiting! We hope you enjoyed the tour!

14. We’ll be getting back to work!

Project Benefits

I packed up two boxes of books for the attic and one to donate as I reorganized. I also wiped down all the shelves and “found” a couple of books I thought I lost—including Native North American Spirituality of the Eastern Woodlands which is a wonderful book.

I now know which categories I want to grow and which are at capacity. I needed a system in order to get a handle on this. You can’t curate a collection if you don’t know what you have (or where it can be found).

Being able to find a particular book whenever I want to, is huge. I discovered a couple of duplicate books during the reorganization. I knew the originals were here somewhere but just couldn’t find them so I had ordered a second copy on Amazon. They were not expensive books but still...

Things to Think About

You need to plan out this project and you can only control so much. My plan was to start with the 100s in the bookcase next to my library table (because I reference those books a lot) and work around the room clockwise to end with history in my grandfather’s old bookcase (he liked history).

Some of my prettier books didn’t end up front and center (the way they were before) but I like where most of the categories fell. (I am a function-over-form person so it worked for me.)

This can be a big project. If you’re thinking of reorganizing your books according to the Dewey Decimal System be aware that you may end up reshelving every single book you own (like I did). Reorganizing a home library of around 1000 books will take most people two or three days. There is a fair amount of weight involved, too. By the time I was done, my back was sore!

Halfway through this project, surrounded by stacks and stacks of books, I wondered if I’d made a mistake. But it came together in the end and I’m glad I took the time to do it!

Why I Like this System

The beauty (and once revolutionary nature) of the Dewey Decimal Systems is that it is dynamic. Books can be added and culled easily. This is important because space is finite (even at the Harvard research library) and it’s hard to manage books without a system.

I find systems interesting and I like working with them. Melvil Dewey was not a nice person, but I like the system he devised in 1872 when he was a student working in the library of Amherst College.

The system, officially called the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), was based on Sir Francis Bacon’s classification of knowledge (which associated history, poetry, and philosophy to the three fundamental faculties of memory, imagination, and reason). I like that part a lot.

The Dewey Decimal System is a flexible system. It works in large libraries holding thousands or even millions of books and can be easily adapted for a (relatively) small home library like mine!

For more on how I adapted the Dewey Decimal System for my home library see “About the System” above. Contrary to some blog posts on this topic, most home libraries don’t need a sticker system.

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About My Space

I love books and learning but I like my little study because of its sentimental value too. In its way, it’s filled with personal symbols. My grandfather’s bookcase and reading lamp. My grandmother’s rocker and china cabinet (china cabinet not pictured). My mom’s little elephant table. Books people I care about once owned. Family pictures (not shown). Religious art and various items I have collected. Artwork and gifts from my kids. The shelves we built when we bought the house and were happy and full of hope.

Our house didn’t come with a study so I took over the living room nobody used and made it my space. It’s a nice thing to do if you’re able to.

About the Mary Statue on the Center Shelf

Closeup of Mary statue over the 200s-700s. This Mary statue appears to have spent time in someone’s outdoor shrine. I found her at our local Salvation Army and felt I had to rescue her. I first became interested in religious art as a child attending Mass with a friend. To this day, the Cloisters is my favorite museum.