ahackwor;68821 said:
I can't decide how to organize my reference material. My ref material include books, large manuals, small manuals, binders, magazines, and or course individual sheets of paper.
I have reference materials in 4 places.
File cabinets contain an a-z set of files with single papers, small booklets and other typical small bits of paper.
Computer Disk contains a bunch of misc folders, this is an action for me to clean up. Right now I have folders of larger groups (sheep stuff, garden stuff, medieval textiles and so on with sub-folders within it containing a variety of source materials, PDF documents, my own docs in a variety of formats, picture files, notes etc.
E-mail file on computer has a folder for reference where everything I save is in there. I also have e-mail folders for each list I am on to separate things and also for orders pending and orders received.
Bookcases contain all books, binders and so on. My books are separated into fiction and non-fiction. Fiction is alphabetical by author and within author either in sequence of the timeline of the universe it's about or alphabetical by title. Non-fiction is grouped by subject in a rough alphabetical order but not exact. Within a subject I group by size of book, more detailed subject or date. So for example most of my farm reference books are on 5 bookcases. Within that I have a shelf of large size books. Going left to right on that shelf I have Garden stuff first general reference then specific ones, then poultry, chickens then ducks then geese, then sheep, general, then more specific sheep color references and sheep genetics books then water rights stuff.
The shelf down from that holds medium size books and it is all sheep related. Sheep general reference on the left, then sheep medical, then breeding management, then history then wool.
I ahve a shelf of newsletters I keep for reference, they are in date order. My historical ag books are all in order by publication date.
The only thing that really matters is can you find a book you need when you need it.
