Class(ification) Wars

[Dai]

Anyone with a sizeable collection of videos, games, books, comics, or other commercially-available rectangles eventually faces the inevitable question: how the hell to organise it all on the shelves. I've been steadily refining my answer to that question since I started collecting anime on VHS in the early 90s, and it's only become more complex as the decades roll on. Since I became a librarian, it's grown closer to my professional interests, and I'm curious about people's overall shelving systems and the decisions they make when they encounter a tricky item. With movies and TV shows in particular, it's never been less straightforward. Sure, there are the old basic choices, like whether to shelve The Prisoner under T or P, but now so many properties are part of larger franchises, crossovers, cinematic universes, and so on, it's led my collection to look less and less (at a glance) like it's in any sort of order.

My basic system for videos is to divide them by format first (blu-ray being most accessible, then DVD, and finally VHS is mostly tucked away in a spare wardrobe), and then alphabetically by title. I have so many exceptions now though. All the MCU movies are shelved in release order under Marvel, for example. Spider-Man: Homecoming is slotted in there too, though I did consider keeping it under S instead. Then there were questions like what to do with the Dark Knight trilogy (B for Batman or D for Dark), and what felt like a more unnatural shelving decision where I put Logan under W, despite the Wolverine movies not being a formal trilogy. Having done that, I'm now wondering whether to shelve the Mothra blu-ray in release date order among the Godzilla movies.

In recent years, I've also started dividing up certain movies by studio. I used to shelve Disney animated classics and Ghibli movies purely by title, but now they all go in release date order under D and G respectively. That's based more on my viewing habits, since watching one of those movies usually puts me in the mood for more of the same.

Having so many anime and toku videos brings up the complication of differing title versions too. So I've ended up with Star Blazers 2199 shelved as Space Battleship Yamato, The Eternal Zero shelved under F for its awful UK title The Fighter Pilot, and various other odd situations. In retrospect, I'm not that consistent with anime, since the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series is under N in the DVD section, but the rebuild movies are under E among the blu-rays. Mobile Police Patlabor ended up under P, since some release have moved Mobile Police to the end of the title or dropped it altogether. And of course Gundam series are always G because they would be a logistical nightmare otherwise.

So how do you go about shelving things? Have you run into any particularly difficult decisions or weird outliers? Am I the only one who spends more than two seconds thinking about this stuff?

[XvGojira]

I sort mine mainly alphabetically. Numbers come first so 101 Dalmations, 9, and 1941 are at the front. Unless they are spelled out, like Seven (which goes in S). When it hits a series, I go by either by release date or chronological order depending on the series. Take Star Wars as an example. I have a the box set of the OT and PT so that goes first, after that I have the Clone Wars cartoons, Solo, Rogue One and then the first two ST entries to end it. With the Godzilla series I have the Showa series, then Heisei, then Millennium, then Shin with the American series after that. The '98 cartoon follows after the movie and if I had the HB cartoons they'd be the first of the US series.

As of right now the MCU is the only series that isn't fully lumped together (Iron mans win I, Avengers and Ant-man in A, and so forth). But I have been tinkering with custom covers for the phases and if I get the covers done to my satisfaction, I'll put them in "M" for MCU. Although if there's some multi/Spider-verse shenanigans in Tom Holland's future that could complicate things. The other Spidey movies are in S, and Amazing Spider-mans would go after the Raimi movies if I had them.

[Benjamin Haines]

The top shelf of my main bookcase is all Toho-produced titles in chronological order, plus the American adaptations of Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island.

The shelf below that has other creature features from Japan, America, Britain and Korea. They're also sorted chronologically, from the original King Kong through last year's Rampage. Bookending them are all of my Gamera titles: the Shout!Factory DVDs, the Mill Creek BRDs, Gamera the Brave and the MST3K vs. Gamera set, with a few other MST3K sets filling the rest of that shelf.

The bottom shelf has the rest of my TV series discs.

On the bookcase to the left of that, the top shelf has comic book film adaptations. From left to right: the 2006 Superman set, the Blade trilogy, Raimi's first two Spider-Man films, Del Toro's two Hellboy flicks, Wonder Woman, the X-Men series, the MCU and the Dark Knight trilogy, plus a few other Chris Nolan films.

The movies on the shelves below that are all grouped by filmmaker (Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Ryuhei Kitamura, etc.) or by series (Alien, Die Hard, The Lord of the Rings, etc.). The sequencing of the groups is just whatever fits on each shelf.

To the left of that is one more bookcase with horror movies, comedies and miscellaneous discs, each group sorted chronologically.

[H-Man]

[Tom R VanSlambrouck]

I do all my titles alphabetical until I get to Godzilla then its chronological order. I have thought about putting my MCU films in that way well but haven't gotten around to it yet. I want to try and build my own media rack soon or have my sister/brother in law do it since he has a nice tool set so maybe when that complete I'll reorganize my collection.

I also don't separate by format, mine is alphabetical starting with numbers first regardless if its on 4K BD/BD/DVD. I don't currently own any VHS tapes as I got rid of those in the mid 2000s.