Your town or city probably has a library and your ebook reader gives you instant access to millions of books. Why would anyone want a personal library in this day and age? 

Book lovers will scoff at the question. For some folks books are objects of reverence. Their feel, look, and even smell evokes instant positive emotions. For millions and millions of my fellow book nerds, no home is complete without a large number of books

But even if you’re not a compulsive book hoarder there are plenty of reasons to consider building a personal library. A well curated collection can serve as a personal reference library, a bank of knowledge about subjects you need to reference often. Alternately, libraries are spurs to curiosity. Having plenty of unread books at arm’s length helps you read more, and just about every successful person you admire insists that reading more is the world’s best success hack

Finally, many thinkers have pointed out libraries’ ability not just to build our knowledge, but to remind us of our ignorance. “Read books are far less valuable than unread ones,” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb claims. Your “library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. 

A personal library keeps you humble by reminding you of all the things you still have to learn. It’s a hedge against hubris and complacency. 

All of which suggests a well curated personal library could be immensely useful to entrepreneurs (maybe even build one in the office). How do you go about creating the most useful and inspirational collection you can? That’s the topic of a great recent Psyche article by Freya Howarth offering plenty of anecdotes about historical figures and contemporary thinkers who swear by their personal libraries as well as practical tips on building your own. The whole piece is definitely worth a read but here’s the essence of Howarth’s how-to advice: 

1. Take stock of your existing collection

If you clicked on this article, I am willing to bet you love books and already own quite a few. The first step to transforming your haphazard stacks or shelves into a bona fide personal library is investigating the books you already own and what they say about your reading tastes and goals. 

“You might start your assessment by taking all your books off your shelves and spreading them out on the floor. This dismantling of a familiar arrangement can help you see anew the items that have become part of the furniture of your home,” Haworth suggests. 

Sorting through your books will involve grouping them in some way that makes sense to you. “Through this process of sorting and categorizing, you’ll start to develop a picture of your reading life and tastes to date. Looking at the categories that seem to generate the most subcategories should give you a pretty clear indication that they represent an area, genre or topic that you’re especially interested in, and this might guide later decisions about acquiring and organizing your books,” she continues. 

2. Decide what to keep and what to donate. 

Once you’ve got a clear picture of what you have, you’ll be in a much better position to see what books you might want to trim from your collection. “By pruning your collection from time to time, you can gain further clarity about your tastes and interests and, of course, make space to add new, more considered books,” notes Haworth. 

If, like my husband, you’re the type who struggles to part with any book, Haworth suggests you may want to first sort books into ‘read’ and ‘unread’ piles. “Then, looking at the books you’ve already read, you can identify: books that you loved and want to reread someday (keep); books you feel like you didn’t totally understand at the time, but that you’ve kept thinking about and might need to try again later (keep); books that you enjoyed at the time, but that haven’t really stuck in your mind and that you wouldn’t rebuy today (consider donating); books you abandoned halfway through and which you have no desire to restart (consider donating),” she explains. 

Howarth goes into detail about all the aesthetic and personal considerations that can go into choosing whether or not to hang onto a book, so if this step is a real challenge for you, I’d recommend you refer to her complete article

3. Begin to build out your library. 

This is the part that will be most thrilling to many book lovers -; buying more books. Once you know what you have, you can start to plug any holes on your shelves. Your existing collection can guide you. 

“Books themselves are an excellent guide for what to read next. They are bundles of influences and references, so to read one is like reading a map, with paths heading off in all directions – towards the books that came before and influenced the author, and onward to later books that the author influenced,” Howarth explains. 

You could also take the advice of economist and super reader Tyler Cowen who argues for reading in clusters or to answer specific questions about the world. If you have a title or two about a given topic you’d like to explore, perhaps consider adding a few more books on the subject and setting yourself a project of really understanding that corner of knowledge. 

4. Mix recommendations and serendipity 

Besides drawing inspiration from your existing collection, Howarth suggests other sources of possible titles to add to your growing library. The first is recommendations: whether it’s a friend who knows your taste or the exceptionally well read proprietor of your local bookstore, finding fellow readers who share your taste is key. 

The internet (including Inc.com) is also, of course, chock full of book recommendations. I am personally obsessed with the site Five Books for ideas. But you can pick your own resources. 

“The website Book Marks, run by the online magazine Literary Hub, collects book reviews from various publications and gives each book a cumulative rating,” Howarth suggests. 

While all these are excellent sources of books that appeal to your current tastes, you’ll never discover weird and wonderful new avenues of exploration if you don’t allow a little randomness into your book discovery process too. If a cover calls to you through a book store window or peaking out of the racks at your local library, grab it. 

5. Add some order to your collection.  

Book organization systems are as diverse as the people who create them, so neither Howarth nor myself would insist on any particular approach to arranging your books. Still, it’s good to inject at least a little order into your personal library, whether that’s shelving your books alphabetically, by genre, by color, or according to the era of your life they’re connected with.  

“Organizing your books carefully is a good way to ensure you’re getting from your library all the benefits it could offer you,” Howarth writes. “When you can locate any book easily, it’s more likely you’ll be able to refer to it or lend it to a friend.” 

She also notes that “you might also want to think about systems to help you navigate within the individual volumes. If you feel comfortable annotating your books, you can create a personalized index at the back of a book as you read it.” Author Tim Ferriss has gone into detail about his own personal system along these lines if you’re looking for inspiration. 

Books bring you joy and make you smarter. But if you arrange your scattered titles into a proper personal library you can multiply all those positive effects many times over. 

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

Jessica Stillman

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