Our Home Library

Another important component of our homeschool is a large home

library. We spent many, many hours this summer cataloging and 

organizing our library to be more efficient for our school use. Using 

the wonderful tool Library Thing, we now have an online searchable

data base for our 4600+ volumes. I wrestled over how best to come

up with categories and ended up using the resource All Through the Ages

to order the history or historical fiction sections. The other sections

kind of determined themselves by sorting into categories like: politics,

travel, animals, reference, Christian living, etc.

We have bookshelves tucked into corners in several rooms. This is the

dining room. 

The study has almost all the history and historical fiction. I decided to 

go ahead and place the historical fiction in the same section as the 

period of history it describes, because that is how we actually use the

books. I felt this would work better for us than having some books for 

World War II in non-fiction and more in a fiction section.

This is in the little girl's room. It has some of our fiction "chapter books" 

as well as a section of craft books. Kregg built this shelf.

These are in the master bedroom and they contain reference, Christian

Living, and Bible Study materials.

The other shelf in the master bedroom. Kregg made all the shelves

in our room.

These are in the main hallway. They contain all the science, animals, 

travel, philosophy, music, art, dance, and more. Kregg made these 

shelves.

Looking the other way down the main hall toward the entry.

This one is in a corner of the den.

After sorting all the books and coming up with our categories, the kids 

chose a sticker for each new category. They stuck a sticker on the spine of

each book and wrapped tape from the cover around the spine and onto the

back cover to make sure the sticker stays on. We also put one on the shelf for easy re-shelving.

The shelf also has a sticker with the category number and name. Inside the

front cover of each book, they wrote the category number as one more 

way to keep things straight. 

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We made a set of cards as one more way to keep things straight and 

find what we need. Each card has the section number and name, the

sticker from the book and the location.

We also made markers out of cardstock for each child. When they take a

book from a shelf, they slip a card with their name on it in the space the 

book came from so they can reshelve more easily. It also allows me to see

at a glance who has books from which section. 

Now, it may seem crazy to have so many books. But we decided a long, long

time ago that we wanted our kids to have a rich environment filled with 

resources that are well written, and filled with values that reflect our 

worldview. Knowing that there has been a definite move toward rewriting 

history to remove God's influence in our culture, we have gathered many 

books that are no longer in print. We also love to collect many of the old

Newberry award winners.

I'm sure there will be things we learn as we go forward to change, improve, 

and make more efficient. If you have any suggestions, please post them for

us. We would love to hear what has worked for you.