Starting Your Own Library

Have you ever thought of building up your own library?  Not a building where you loan out books, unless you are so inspired.  Your own library is the collection of books on your bookshelf.

When was the last time you went through the books on your shelf?  Too many of us go for years without really looking at what is on our bookshelves.  Now is the time, to purge and organize your library and begin expanding it.

Begin by pulling the books off your bookshelf and dusting both.  You want to be able to see the titles clearly.  Take a close look at each book.  Have you even read the book?  Are you even interested in reading it?  If not, set it aside to sell, exchange, or donate.  If you want to keep it, put it in another pile.

Once you have completed a review of what you had on your shelf, box up the ones you want to eliminate so that they don’t get mixed up in your other books.  Do you have any other boxes of books stored in closets?  Pull them out and do the same thing with them.  What is left is the basis of your library.

Sit back and look at your keepers.  Do you see a trend with your reading habits?  Do you love the classics?  Are you more geared toward romance?  Sports books interest you the most?  Spy novels about the only thing you read?  Maybe you have such a mixture of genres that you have no idea which category you belong in.  That is wonderful.

Now, you can begin putting the books back on the shelf.  This time you can organize them better where you can find them quickly.  Where do you want the reference books?  If you mainly fall in one genre, do you want to alphabetize them by title or author?  If you have many genres, do you still alphabetize them or sort them into categories?  Get them organized on the shelf and look at your library foundation.

From this starting point, you can begin growing your library.  Do you see where you are missing a book from a series?  Now you know that you need it.  Are you looking to collect all the works of one author?  See which one you are lacking.  

Begin growing your library to fit your taste and personality.  In the end you might have the best collection of fishing lure books in the world, if not the only collection.