How do Half Price Books stores organize their stock?

August 4, 2013 5:30 PM

I've got a long wishlist of books, and shop fairly frequently (in person) at a local Half Price Books. I'd like to organize my list generally by the physical order of the books on their shelves. Does anyone know if they use the Dewey Decimal System, or Library of Congress, or some other system? Is it different for each store?

It's easy enough with certain topics, or with fiction, but other things end up in places I wouldn't expect. For example, my HPB shelves their LEGO Mindstorm (and other robotics) books in the general science area, while I would expect them to be with the computer books. Some biographies of scientists are in the general biography area, and some are in science.

I know I could ask the next time I'm there (and I will if I don't get any answers) but I thought someone here might know, so I can get my wishlist all nicely organized before I go shopping next.

Thanks!

posted by SuperSquirrel to Shopping (7 answers total)

Best answer: I used to frequent a Half Price in Houston, and I'm 99% sure that the categorization there was an informal one. Most commercially printed paperbacks have a suggested category or two listed on the bottom of the back-- you know, something like "History/Women's History" or "Vegetarian Cooking". I have a hunch a lot of bookstores use this as an aid when they can't otherwise be bothered or don't know. Maybe if you could establish what category a given book is suggested for, that could help your search? To be honest, unless I'm way off the mark here, I can't think of any bookstore I've ever been to that was organized according either to Dewey or to LOC.
posted by threeants at 5:44 PM on August 4, 2013

Best answer: It's not dewey decimal, it tends to be by subject, then alphabetically by author.

They do have some idiosyncracies -- for example, there's no Biography section -- so biographies are kind of scattered around where they best fit -- e.g. biographies of Richard Feynman, Einstein, etc. will be in "Science", biographies of Jefferson, Lincoln will be in "History", Picasso, Monet, will be in "Art", etc. Kind of a pain if you're looking for a biography that doesn't naturally fall into one of their categories.
posted by smcameron at 5:46 PM on August 4, 2013 [1 favorite]

To be honest, unless I'm way off the mark here, I can't think of any bookstore I've ever been to that was organized according either to Dewey or to LOC.

Me neither, and I'm a cataloger by training. Bookstores have a vested interest in making you look at more things before you find the things you want. Libraries are a bit more invested in you finding the thing.
posted by clavicle at 5:52 PM on August 4, 2013 [6 favorites]

Response by poster: Huh. Thanks for the replies. I've been going to bookstores forever and ever, and I always thought they must use some kind of library-ish system that I just never bothered to identify.

And now that I think on it more, smcameron, I guess my HPB doesn't have a dedicated Biography section either! Feynman and Einstein are two topics/authors I look for every time I visit, and I have to cover all the bases by looking in more than one place, which, as a former relational database jockey, drives me nuts.
posted by SuperSquirrel at 6:30 PM on August 4, 2013

Moreover, they arrange the sections however they please. There are four or five in my area and I always have to take a minute to sort of scan the signs to figure out where they've stuck things.

The one I like best is the one that's put true crime, self-help, and law school textbooks on the same set of shelves. Second best is the one that put "travel" on the other side of the store from "foreign languages."

The only constant is that the paperbacks are usually in the middle, and that they're grouped as Sci Fi, Fantasy, Horror, and Westerns.

(Part of this is that there's no rhyme or reason to what kind of stock they're trying to manage - the one by the university and the one in Worthington have a ton of Russian books because that's where the Russian majors and the Russian ex-pats live, respectively.)
posted by SMPA at 6:31 PM on August 4, 2013

Best answer: Yeah, what SMPA said. I used to work at Half-Price Books in Columbus, but that was about 8 years ago, so things might have changed. But generally, individual stores get to decide what sections to have, and it's based on what type of books they get. My store was just down the road from the biggest megachurch in the state so we had a huge religion section, with many subsections (for example, Historical Christian Fiction). The store that was near Ohio State had a section for "retro" computer books (apparently calling them retro made them sell), books our store wouldn't have even bothered to put on the shelf.

And on top of that, it's pretty much up to the individual employee who processes the incoming used book to decide where to put it. This works OK most of the time, but of course people will disagree on certain things, or will just get things plain wrong.

I know it's annoying, but I think your best bet if you're unsure of where to find a book is to either check all the sections it could be conceivably located, or ask an employee "I'm looking for a book on X, where would it be?"
posted by mcmile at 8:39 PM on August 4, 2013

I can't think of any bookstore I've ever been to that was organized according either to Dewey or to LOC.

And for that, you should be thankful. I say this as a librarian. For larger collections, yes, shelving according to these classification systems make sense. But for anything Half-Price Books-size or smaller (think local neighborhood library branch), shelving by subject is much more customer-friendly for most purposes.

I still think books should be classified/cataloged/labelled according to a traditional classification scheme--maybe even in DDC order within each subject shelving area--so librarians can do their meta-level work. But main subject areas, yeah, let's arrange items more in the way people expect to see them.
posted by Rykey at 6:02 AM on August 5, 2013