Libraries as Material and Mental Landscapes

Getting my library sorted and organized is going to help my writing

Some book history and some education history, still waiting to be put in sequential order.

I moved across state lines less than a year ago, and I am only just now getting my library organized to suit me. I’m still in the middle of the process, and there’s a great deal of work ahead, but the hard physical labor is done. And it was so needed.

Before this process, I had no idea where to find any particular title or even any particular topic among my bookshelves. Now I at least have an idea of where to find all books on a related topic.

This means I can write from a clean, well-lighted inner space, rather than a chaotic and cluttered one.

When my books are disordered, my writing is disordered. It’s not that my writing, scholarly or not, formal or not, depends on a constant consultation with this book or that. Much of my writing doesn’t entail looking at “sources” at all. But even when I don’t need to find a particular book, my little writing brain needs to be confident that I could find a particular book if I took a notion to do so.

Until recently, that has not been the case at all. I lost a couple of bookcases to damage in the move, the smaller room sizes in this house required that I split up my remaining shelves, and the book boxes coming off the…