How to get Books/ Magazines organized...

[Donny Lawson]

I know everyone has their own theroy on how this should be done but I think I could be the Book KING. Over the last 15 plus years I've been in book clubs and ordered every month and I have alot of nice books. I've also subscribed to countless magazines and have them in boxes that seem to stack up here and there. I do not want to throw them out because woodworking plans never go out of style.I know I can buy the mags. on disc but I really like the real mags. Does anyone have a method or a shelf built for these things? I'm talking "hundreds" of books and mags. I used to buy boxes at a time off of e-bay. Can't afford to do that now.,but I do have one heck of a collection. I've probally got a plan for everything out there but I just cannot find it when I need it. So it's time to figure out how to organize it. Is there a fancy method for doing this easily? The one thing I know is that when I die the local library will have one heck of a woodworking section.
Donny

[Alan Heffernan]

I went to Sams and bought a metal floor cabinet with doors. Also bought another at Office Depot. I strengthened the shelves with some additional cross stiffening and stacked the magazines in there, in order of course. I have all issues of FWW, Wood, Shopsmith, and large partials of others. I stopped subscriptions on others about three years ago. One cabinet is now overflowing to another. I have been considering getting rid of them all except FWW and Shopsmith and going to electronic versions. They are taking up too much room and are difficult to find anything in them anyway.

[Alan Schaffter]

DVD and the recycling center.

[Don Jarvie]

Here's your 1st project for the new shop.

Do you have a Den or Library where you read? Consider making a nice bookcase or built-ins for all of your books.

Google home librarys and you can get some ideas.

[Jon Endres]

I have the same problem. Books, not so much, but a nice bookshelf will solve that problem. The magazines are a different problem as you can't just pile them up on the shelves in any semblance of order, nor can you put them on the shelf vertically like books. I have been using those cardboard magazine files that you can buy at the office supply stores, you can get fancier plastic and even metal or wood ones (or make wood ones) but I need dozens of them. They are ugly if you want to have your magazines out somewhere where people can see them. The shop is a different story.

Anyway - one solution I have been using for my collection of Fine Woodworking and Fine Homebuilding mags is one that was just featured as a tip in the latest Family Handyman magazine (not my tip, though). You basically go buy a bunch of hanging file folders - you can get them through craigslist sometimes for really cheap. Cut the folder off about an inch or two below the metal rod and insert the rod into the middle of the magazine. Then hang the magazine in a file cabinet so the spine faces up. You can get 6-10 years worth of most magazines in a file drawer, plus you can put them in order and you can label the drawer. It is somewhat of an expense but if you ever get rid of the magazines you can use the file cabinet for something else.

Another solution is one that I saw a picture of on an old internet newsgroup. It was a shelf, about 3' high and 5' wide, maybe (hard to judge scale) and the shelf had several vertical columns with hardboard dividers about 2" apart. It looked like you could lay the magazines flat, which would prevent curling, one year per divider. I would like to post the picture here but it's not my picture so I really can't. It's hard to describe. If you laid a magazine flat on a table so that the cover was facing up, just like you'd read it, that was the way that they were slid into this shelf. It looked pretty slick and looked like it held hundreds of magazines.

[Richard Gonzalez]

People have given ideas for storing the magazines above. If you are looking for a way to find a particular project, there is a guy who keeps up a running index of every article and plan in many woodworking mags:
http://www.woodworkingmagazineindex.com/

Its not free ($10 per year) but you can search by topic and find out which magazine has the article or project you want. Then you only have to find that issue in you piles.....

Richard

[Jim Sebring]

I just put my magazines in hanging file folders in a 4 drawer file cabinet. No need to cut the folders off. I find them at garage sales during the summer. Most folks don't seem to know how much those things cost at the local office supply store!

Books are another issue. I had to prioritize mine last spring. I finally gave 6 boxes to the library for their periodic sales events. I still have 6 more boxes that I don't have bookcase space for.

[Donny Lawson]

Sounds like alot of you have the same problem as I do. "Jim Sebring" sounds real close to me on this one. Boxes and Boxes.... I was thinking about a Magazine rack something like in a book store. But, where would I put something that big????????? Something is bound to hit me soon.
Donny