Ha! Me too. I was expecting some kind of analysis of the perfect shelf material and optimum depth and height of each shelf based on the number of books by genre and their dimensions.
Ha! I am making some shelves for myself and spent the weekend measuring the dimensions and weight of all of my books to later divide into different bins based on height, depth and weight (density).
I ended up with four different shelve heights based on my measurements (paperbacks, hardcovers, misc., and art-books), and used the classical technique of bird's beak shelving supports to make all shelves configurable.
Do you have a photo of the end of a shelf? I can't tell if you've got beaks at the back and front of the shelving, or if you're doing some kind of cantilevered setup.
Not at all. The shelves are 18 mm thick multiplex, but they all have a thin 20 mm strip of MDF covering their front edge (overlapping the shelves by 2 mm downwards), so the effective shelve thickness is 20 mm.
The bird's beaks vertically divide each case in increments of 53½ mm. The four practical shelve heights this allows are:
A: 53½ mm × 4 - 20 mm: 194 mm
B: 53½ mm × 5 - 20 mm: 247½ mm
C: 53½ mm × 6 - 20 mm: 301 mm
D: 53½ mm × 7 - 20 mm: 354½ mm
Other configurations don't make much sense, although I do use (53½ mm × 2 - 20 mm = 87 mm) for the special atlas shelves at the bottom.
You may have to adjust these sizes depending on the books you own (particularly paperbacks; they can have regional variations in height). If you go for the bird's beak approach (looks really classy, but a lot more work) you could increase or decrease that basic unit size of 53½ mm.
Test it all in a mock-up before you build it. :)
I used a custom jig and a router to cut the bird's beaks from 18mm multiplex (went through three router bits; gruelling work that), but you can also buy them pre-made.
Feel free to contact me on Twitter if you need more details. I'm only an amateur woodworker though. I really should write up the process of building this beast some day.
I've wanted a app that I can take a digital picture of my 12' x 8' wall of uncatorgized books, and the program will tell he roughly where the book looking for is physically.
For instance, the "Book you are requesting is located top right, second shelf from the top."
I've thought about building one, but I don't see a market. Maybe, Librarians, and what's left of book stores? For instance, "Hay the computer says we have that book, but someone probably put it in the wrong section? Go use that app?"
App: take picture, hard part (would pull titles on spines of books, and put into database. Don't have a clue if that's even possible, without huge financial resources? Yes-it would be OCR, but what open source program could I fool with?)
(I'm also considering getting rid of most of my books. It's kinda tough. I've spend a lifetime collecting reference books, and 1st editions. To get a idea of the used book market, I have had over 100 pretty current computer/programming books on CL for $500, and one person was interested, and that was a scam.)
