I am an academic and I sort by color. I like how it looks and I'm still able to access what I need with ease.

I purchased these bookshelves from Target; they look lovely in my living room and I love the way they warm up the room: http://www.target.com/p/Carson-2-Shelf-Bookcase-Chestnut/-/A-11111066

I also really like this one: http://www.target.com/p/Avington-Low-Bookcase-Dark-Tobacco/-/A-10787463#?lnk=sc_qi_detaillink

Fellow academic here - won't you have an office for a lot of your books? Although I guess as a new hire, you might not exactly have the biggest office in your department!

I think you have to group by category/topic if you don't have a visual memory for your books (like remembering books by the colour of the spine). If that's the case, and you would like something attractive, legal style bookcases (wood with glass doors) go a long way towards shutting out the visual clutter that a bunch of books in different sizes/colours might have, while keeping them accessible. Most ikea systems, for example, have the option of adding glass doors to the front. I am also quite fond of using their white magazine files for storing journals, papers and other things that I don't keep in filing cabinets - I just write lightly in pencil, like, Journal of Anthropology 1980 - 1985, on the front so it's easy to access.

Check out the image of the white bookcases with the doors here - there's actually a couple of good options here - I found a whole blog post on bookcases for you to browse. Good luck and congrats on the new job. http://www.simpleeffects.com/blog/?p=362

And here's an AT post on magazine files too:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/survey-do-you-keep-magazines-106664

We turned one of our bedrooms into a library because I have so many books. We did floor to ceiling shelves (bought the wood and put up the shelves ourselves) and separated out the collections with little library-oriented pictures or objects. (for example, my set of law books has a small framed photo that separates it from my husband's computer books). I have some literary posters framed and on the walls. We also made the room very comfortable for someone to sit and browse (rocking chair, blankets, throw pillows, etc.) so it's a welcoming and interesting space.

One thing I did was think about what I liked about libraries or bookstores that I visit and tried to duplicate that feeling.

I really like the Elfa shelving systems. Are you renting? It's easy to move the system from apartment to apartment. They also have freestanding units. I found that's the best way to store huge amounts of books since it's fairly custom and you aren't bringing big bookcases from place to place with you. On mine, I sorted the books by type and author. I had magazines and academic journals in those magazine holders by date.

I'd suggest Ikea BILLY shelving (with extensions put on top). We have our study entirely lined in these units and in mass they can look quite nice.

As for how to organize books I organize by subject matter and within subject manner by authors last name. While this is less attractive than organizing by color or size its the best way to be easily able to find a book when you need it. I also tend to leave little trinkets or pictures next to a few sections I use less often so I remember what they are. So for instance next to my West European history/politics section I have a jar of Euros. While I realize that some people really do remember what their books binding looks like I'd found after a certain number of books any other organization method simply isn't practical for me. As for journals I tend to keep these on a few shelves by themselves rather than within subjects.

Good luck!

I don't know how to officially categorize books like a library but I group them in my head subconsciously based on the topic and how I feel about them. I found that scattering small to medium sized bookshelves around my home, each with a different type of book, helps me keep track of things and stay organized. For example, my office has business and personal finance books, dining room has certain non-fiction and travel books, cookbooks in the kitchen, trashy fiction in the bedroom and classy fiction in the living room. Each bookshelf has further category, topic, or author groupings. Find a system that works for you and how you think about your books, and go with it.

check here for some storage ideas...

http://bookshelfporn.com/

Books are beautiful. Lots of books make a room. It's a certain kind of room, not loved by all, but for some of us, walls full of dog-earred, annotated and abused books are innately belovedly beautiful. Anf if you're just starting out, Ikea has clean-lined, capacious units.

What I did in your place was to have the lumber yard cut 4"x8"s into the 12" upright pieces and 1"x8"s into shelves to fit the space they were going. I stained them a liked color, and voila. (Oh, and a couple of molly anchors along the top to prevent catastrophe.) This simple solution has always gleaned compliments, to my surprise!

This doesn't solve the attractive part, but it does help with organization; shelve your books by call no. (use EndNote or some such to help you organize). If you're like me you've spent so much time in school libraries looking in certain subject areas that you probably already know the relevant call nos. off the top of your head (I lived in CC and GN mostly), so you'll be able to find what you're looking for quickly.

As for making it nice-ish looking, I've always liked the look of a wall covered from floor to ceiling with wall-mounted shelves. A little while ago Design Sponge showed a clever way to combine storage and decoration on book shelves that I always thought could be nice against a wall of books (designsponge.com/2012/01/diy-project-artwork-secret-storage-box.html).

Thanks for asking a great question! I'm curious to see what other people suggest, too.

I know a book collector who lined *every* wall in his house with 1 shelf along the ceiling, about 1 foot down. Think crown moulding, but with books. There was a certain beauty to it. It minimized the visual clutter by putting all the books above eye level, but maintained a visual continuity as well. My wandering eye always rested on the myriad of fascinating titles beckoning to my inner book-lover.

I say, invest in some nice shelves that will be practical, then embrace the "cluttered" look of thousands of books. If you love books, surely you like the "library" look. Then minimize any other clutter and you'll still have a designed feel to your living space. My dad is the book lover of all book lovers (he has thousands upon thousands, and my mother is ever at a loss how to store them all) and his library/office is beautiful.

Another academic here; I rely on IKEA's Billy bookcases for the most part. I have a small 2BR townhouse, and 13 bookcases scattered through the rooms; the LR/DR has 6 bookcases, one bedroom has 4 and the other has 3. Most of them are Billy bookcases with the extensions; some of them I've had for 15 years or so, and they've been through four moves, so I think they're pretty sturdy. And yes, they take up a lot of wall space, but I wouldn't live without the books. In terms of organization, they're grouped into subjects, roughly, and I try to keep books by the same author on the same shelf, but the authors are not necessarily in order. But I have to say, I'm a huge fan of ebooks too, and if you don't have an ereader, you can still read ebooks in various ways (on a phone, a computer, etc.); you really need to look into that as well.

Fellow academic - actually there are two of us, and even though one of us is in science we have A LOT of books.

We used the rubbermaid storage system: http://www.homedepot.com/Storage-Organization-Shelves-Shelving-Systems/Rubbermaid/h_d1/N-aq62Z1anZ5yc1v/h_d2/Navigation?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053&searchNav=true#/?c=1&1an=1an

we did not long rack on the top that basically spanned the length of the room and then hung long tracks off of it. We also decided to buy wood instead of the melamine and had them cut down to size which does make it look prettier.

In terms of organizing your books - you might just want to use the Library of Congress (LC) system. Each published book should have the catalog number printed on the page with other publishing information. If not, you can always go to the Library of Congress website and enter the ISBN to get the catalog number. This way, your books are cataloged and organized the same way the university library does it (generally by subject and author), and you can make easy cross references.

LibraryThing is a helpful website that will create an online catalog of your books for you, so you can search your own collection, just like a library!

How many books are we talking about? I have 3 full-size Ikea Billy and a 4x4 Expedit full of books. I added the floral glass doors to the Billy, looks great and my books don't get dusty. The Expedit is positioned perpendicular to a wall, it is for leisure books and library books. The shelf is so deep that I can use book both front and back like the library stacks.

I find floor to ceiling build-in shelves to be a bit more attractive. (There are many hacks to make the BIly look build-in) Gives you an old bookstore feel.

If you want to do the stacks, you could get the Expedit and used both sides. Make sure to secure it to a wall or the floor. Makes a great room divider as well.

I found it easiest to designate a couple long walls in my home for books and then blanket the walls floor to ceiling with IKEA Billy bookcases (which you can hack to fit most spaces). That way my books / art materials / tchotchkes are contained and the rest of my space can be visually clutter-free.

The High/Low Project built bookshelves using pipes and reclaimed wood, it's an easy project to do and turns out beautifully, it can easily be made to fit any sized space:

http://www.hgtv.com/video/a-dream-living-room-for-kari-video/index.html

Our library consists of well over a thousand novels plus roughly the same in non-fiction. Fiction is alphabetized and kept apart with lettered library separator posts. Everything else is sorted by topic and in a few cases by size for practical reasons. Previously we had a shelf wall fiction and one for non-fiction. Now we have one wall with a section reserved for general non-fiction and keep the remaining non-fiction books around the house where they make sense, e.g. food-related in the kitchen and music theory in the music room.

As for sorting books by size or color or anything else not directly related to the contents, is completely beyond my comprehension. Which color exactly is the back of Lord of The Rings? What do I do when the three volumes of said novel has three different colors? I have two copies of The Hobbit - Allan Lee's illustration a massive 4-pounder, the other a tiny pocket book. How do I get my copy of The Technologists out from underneath that tower of smaller novels stacked on top of it? Do I even own the third volume of Wizard of Earthsea - could I have lent it to someone or is it simply in another stack? Not in a million years. We don't do things by the Dewey system, but a bit of order is... well... in order.

By the way. To keep it simple and to help sorting novels, we have them in a database. Textbooks, dictionaries and everything non-fiction is only registered if we consider it "ever valid". A latin dictionary is. A computer textbook is not. Two good examples of online databases are Librarything.com and Goodreads.com. We use the former for its localization and integration with European libraries, even if Goodreads appear to be the better one from a CS view of things.

p.s. And yes; http://bookshelfporn.com is your friend. Extremely cool website.

I agree wtih SAGAKA, you gotta sort your books with call number. I label my books with the LCC number.You can look it up on the Library of Congress website. Took me almost a day to do it, but so worth it. When I move, my books are put in boxes by size to prevent damage, but I can always put them them on the shelves quickly.

Purge ruthlessly as you pack. Pack retained books by subject and label the boxes accordingly. Store the work-related cartons at your workplace office. Store your other book cartons and furnishings off-site, too. Clean and paint your new home as needed. Bring in and arrange your home's sleeping, seating, and work surface furnishings. Put a bookcase of your choice against a wall of your largest room. Empty onto it the book cartons labeled as being most important to your home. Release the emptied book cartons. Repeat as needed, one bookcase at a time, to minimize the chaos phase of settling into a new home and job. Good luck!

I think floor to ceiling bookshelves are attractive. My favorite way of going about that is in a hallway - they are highly accessible and the visual clutter is kept out of the living room. You could keep a smaller bookshelf near your desk for books you use a lot. Maybe something to keep in mind when looking for an apartment? Otherwise, if you have a spare bedroom, you could set it up as a library - lots of bookshelves (I like Billy, in the dark brown shade), a comfy reading chair and an old dining room table as your desk? Add some industrial accents - metal rolling carts for file storage and maybe an old school map/chart or two as decoration - it would be highly functional and the visual "clutter" of the books would be part of the "look".
Is it an option for you to do Billy with doors? That would def. cut back on the clutter.
I like this book for ideas:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/living-with-books-alan-powers/1003290918?ean=9781402742125

A lot depends on how you use your books or what organising method makes most sense to you. My shelves are a mix of found, DIY and hand-me-downs. I put my most-referenced books on the more accessible shelves, all are grouped by subject for non-fiction or author for fiction. I also keep books on shelves as close to their usually used area as possible. Kitchen has cookbooks and gardening (the room nearest the back door to the yard), sewing and crafts in the craft area, fiction in the relaxing area, etc. Library books stay together in the rolling tote I drag them back and forth in unless they're actively being read. That way you're always ready to return them without hunting all over. I don't currently have any doors on shelves but it's definitely on the project list. There was a post on AT a while back about covering bookshelves with curtains.

I want to build these kinds of shelves. Does anyone know how much weight they can hold?

My bookcases are IKEA Billy. They're organised by subject matter.

To make them visually appealing, what I've done with my books is covered them all with white dust jackets. I buy a pad of 11" x 17" at the pound store (the UK version of the dollar store) and use those to cover the books. The book titles are then written on the spine with invisible security ink. If I want to find a book, I have a small UV flashlight that illuminates the ink for easy searching.

A friend has taken my idea and run with it even further. She has ordered pastel coloured papers in bulk, using that for dust jackets. Then she uses a label printer to make up a QR barcode for the spine. Since her mobile phone is glued to her hand (metaphorically speaking) she uses that to scan the barcode and find the title she needs.

There are a billion options out there as far as shelves go, but if you're looking for an actual way to manage your collection I agree that EndNote is a good option, but there are also some cheap, efficient home book scanners you can use to catalog your library. http://www.collectorz.com/book/barcode-scanner.php I know the CueCat works really well, but you might also like the simplicity of a phone app. Most programs will also allow you to record WHERE each book is stored in your collection, making it easier to find what you need when you need it.

I'm another post PhD, book lover who used to work in a book store. There are some simple things you can do to make shelves look neat, while retaining the alpha or topic order on them.

1) have the books flush with the front edge of the shelf, so the different widths don't create a snaggletooth appearance. It's really easy to do this - put one arm behind the books and push them toward the front edge, while using the other hand to make sure they are level.

2) shelve from large to small, from hardcover to paperback, within alphabetized authors name or within topic. Again, this neatens up the snaggletooth look.

3) all your bookcases should be the same as much as possible. Also, place all the bookcases in a run along one (or more) walls, to avoid the cluttered bookcases everywhere look. If you want some to be lower than others, try to make it look intentional, not haphazard. Lots of ways to do this, but for example, a half height bookcase with a piece of art above it, hung to make it the same height as higher cases on either side.

4) As much as possible keep all the shelves at the same height, so there's a long line of shelves running through adjacent cases at the same level.

5) Keep any oversized books that don't fit on the shelves all together in one place - stacked on their sides, or all on one section of the shelving where they fit.

6) Make a place for your most frequently used books - these could just be the books you are currently using on whatever project. But you should have a place on or near your desk, at arms reach, for these books. Books you are working on always get messy (though in a way I find very attractive) and having one area designated for the travelling collection of books currently in use, keeps the rest of the cases from looking messy.

7) Designate a shelf for library books and books belonging to others - just so they don't disappear into the yawning maw of your collection.

Billy Shelves by Ikea are terrific but, if you are likely to be a bit nomadic for the future, consider stacking folding bookcases -here's one kind. They can be stacked, and they fold down making moving soooooo much easier. I don't love the style, however, once they are filled with books, you don't see them.

- http://www.amazon.com/Mission-Style-Folding-Stacking-Bookcase/dp/B00263M5U2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336489015&sr=8-1

Last but not least, I've found that a box of books is roughly equal to 1 shelf in a book case.

Good luck to you.

I'm a professional librarian and I have a lot of books, but I would never bother with spine labels at home! Cataloging is a lot of work!

Our house has a room that is kind of a pass-through to the upper (bedroom) floor. It's about the size of a small bedroom, but it has a big archway, a stairs landing, and two big windows, so not an easy room to decorate -- but perfect for a library. We wrapped the walls with IKEA Billy units, including using the corner "brackets," and toppers to go nearly to the ceiling. (We might add crown molding to the tops to look built-in, although I kind of like the more contemporary straight lines without it...) One wall holds two wide sections, the rest of the space is a mix of wide and narrow sections. (IKEA has an online app for planning optimal layouts.) With bright colored drapes, trunks with cushions acting as window seats, my mini-desk, and a "comfortable chair" (which nobody really uses) the room is always complimented by guests, and I can find anything quickly simply by clumping related topics together. (Everyone collects in certain areas, right? If you have TOO much in only one that you specialize in, I'd sort those by author or title, whichever you mainly remember them by.)

In previous apartments and our old house, we had bookshelves lining the hallway (if it's at least 42 inches wide, works great!) a whole wall in a bedroom, a whole wall in a home office... places where we could have a stretch of several identical shelves side by side. This gives a feeling of built ins and makes the shelving feel luxurious, even if it's particleboard! (Only works well if filled with books, though -- not so much if some books and some chotskies.)

Like other people here, I use IKEA BILLY bookcases. Mine have frosted glass doors. I organize my books by theme in a rough way: "Modern Fiction," "Big and Heavy," "Trollope." It works for me. Plain old bookshelves are "practical" and "attractive" to me. Also, BILLY bookcases have adjustable shelves and you can buy additional shelves -- which can really help maximize the storage space.

Fellow academic and book lover here as well, who lives in a very tiny studio. I first separate my books three ways.

First, I have the books I'm using for current research at my (work) office, where I do most of my writing. Mind you, I also scan these books into Papers so they're accessible at home as well, but they serve me well living in an active work space.

Second, I keep my novels and nonfiction separate. My novels/fiction I keep to a minimum and use the library for pleasure reading whenever I can so trade paperbacks that I'll never read again don't pile up. However, I do like to hang on to classics and favorites, and these live in a small decorative bookshelf in my living room/bedroom that I use as a nightstand. I organize these books by color, as I rarely refer to them and I think it's pretty.

For my nonfiction (which is a majority of my library), I use IKEA's original Billy (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/83688210/). I have the shelves lining my long entry hallway and plan to "build them in" soon (http://www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/11/from-billys-to-built-ins/). I like the look of having all of the same shelving in one place, and hallways are a great way to keep everything together, and if the hallway is wide enough, the shelves are intrusive.

I organize my books by subject and author so they're easy to find. Most of my books are history books, and I like to add a souvenir of my travels to each geographic group to aesthetics, storage, and to easily see which shelf holds which subject. For example, I have a jade Buddha with my Chinese history books, a shell I found in Ireland with my Irish history books, etc. I also keep over-sized books together, stacked horizontally on one shelf with a few accessories.

My library books also live at my office, or, if at home, on floating shelves near my desk to keep myself from hoarding them! However, I do tend to scan these books into Papers and then return them. Since I can't write on them anyway, they might as well live digitally (although I do print them out sometimes).

Like @dulcibella said, if the bookcases are all the same (which is why I like the Billy system, as you can always add more shelving as your collection grows and know that you can match what you have), and if the books are all flush with the front of the shelves, things will look very neat. I prefer the darker Billy shelving, as it looks less cheap than the ash finish.

Enjoy your new home and best of luck with the new job!

Another academic family here. We have white Billy bookcases with glass doors filling an entire wall in the living room and another in the breakfast nook. The glass doors cut down dust and cleaning time and help them look nice rather than just cheap. Fiction is organized by author last name and others by subject. Billy was, by far, the cheapest shelving system we could find for a large number of books. We were able to fit an extra shelf in each until to add a little more space, too, but it depends on the size of your books. If you don't live close to an Ikea, they will ship from the store. We had trouble with pieces being damaged when we did this, but they did replace the damaged pieces- just took a while. Billy bookcases are particle board which doesn't stand up well to repeated moving, so if you plan to move soon and often, you may need to leave some books in boxes and invest in wood shelves slowly (or make your own?). Congrats on your new job, too.

Ex academic here-- I also use Billy book shelves and group by topic (and within each subtopic, alphabetical by author).

I found that keeping the shelf height uniform across the room makes the space look uncluttered.

Here is our book depository.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/seasnowlet/5778315612/in/set-72157626844840572/

It used be exclusively a library study, but then we had a kid, so we had to move back into it. Someday we will re-do our basement so we can have dedicated study space again.

I have about 4000 books now. Mostly in IKEA Billy, like everybody else. Some in pine shelves from the unfinished furniture store, which are a lot stronger and hold up to moving better. If you go pressboard like Billy, get shelves as narrow as you can, because book weight is substantial (especially if you are heavy on 19th century novels as I am). Some people think books look messy, but they are just wrong. Non-readers will never understand it. I love the rhythm and texture of shelves of books. Also, get more bookshelves than you strictly need to house your collection, both to house future purchases and to leave some blank space for texture. You can use those blank spaces to put small decorative items, but keep it simple or it will look cluttered.

Sorting by colour is INSANE, or at least it's for people with only a small collection, like maybe 1000 books or less. When I passed that point I had to start categorizing things more carefully. I would never be able to find anything if I had to remember what colour the spine was. I grew up in libraries and I use a subject-based sorting system for my nonfiction (my own, because that works for me). My professional books have their own sorting system, and they are kept in separate shelves. Oversize books are kept separate from more standard-sized books, except in the few categories where the mix is more even between standard and oversize, and I just adjust the shelves to fit them together.

Fiction is sorted out by size (because mass market paperbacks can fit very efficiently in a shelf designed for them, but you might have to build that yourself if such a beast is not available locally) and then language, then alpha by author, then chronologically by original pub date. I don't bother to sort by genre; it's all fiction to me.

I periodically go through and take everything off the shelves, clean the books (they get pretty dusty and dirty), then re-sort them. That keeps things fresh. It also enables me to reallocate shelf space when a subject area grows a lot, or when I decide to get rid of some books I know I won't use any more.

I really like the look of built-in bookcases which cover a whole wall and inside them nothing but books on them, not sorted in any specific way (like the picture). I think it gives it the feeling of a library, which I love (as a fellow bookworm) and also has something grand, like, as if you had an english country manor with a library instead of a small apartment! I don't think it looks cluttered, partly because I love books, partly because the amount and if you just have them side by side, the repetition kind of creates a pattern for me and is less messy to look at then random things (also, if the bookcase is symetrical, that helps.) Well, built-in bookcases are expensive, but people have done great things with Ikea items like billy or expedit,
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/01/billy-bookcases-to-built-ins.html
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/01/billy-benno-library-is-ikea-hack-of.html
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/04/high-times-for-billy.html
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/03/huge-expedit-wall.html
http://www.ikeahackers.net/2012/02/expedits-to-ceiling.html
Those are just some examples, google & search ikea hacker for more and create something that looks custom & I think it will look great!
I wouldn't necessarily mix the books with other stuff- it can look great if you have great things & taste & can style bookshelves, but it might just end up looking cluttered & messy. Just books is in my opinion easier.

oh no, my day is officially toast! bookshelf porn?? sometimes I really hate you guys... ;-)

We added a built-in bookcase this January and I was able to work in both my treasures and my precious tomes. One of the most important things when you think about installing a bookcase is to make sure that it is painted with the correct paint- either a hard enamel or acrylic type paint. Latex is terrible- the spines of your books will stick. We built our own bookshelves in the theater room and the DH used latex- I had to line them with silicone-impregnated baking parchment paper to keep crumbling leather bindings from becoming attached to the shelf. I also shelve some of the books with more fragile bindings flat so that they don't get slanted or damaged.

here's the latest shelf:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitkabbit/6967682793/in/photostream/

Librarian here. Your public library will have books on managing your book collection:
- Estelle Ellis. _At Home with Books: How Booklovers Live with and Care for Their Libraries
- Alan Powers. _Living with Books
- Jane Greenfield _The Care of Fine Books
Amazon links to many more, but these are the ones I like.

I go with Ikea´s Billy as well. Good idea to separate topics: Take simple bricks or, smaller, cobble stones, and spray paint them in copper or another metallic colour. Cost is basically nothing and looks great and individual. Have fun with rearranging your books! Another idea: Buy enough "Billies" to leave some space. These books are not the last ones you are going to buy.

I posted earlier, but here is my dream library, and it's actually Billy shelving . . .total Bookshelf porn!

http://www.ikeahackers.net/2011/07/french-country-house-library.html

When I moved into my first solo apartment, I had a "1 book per square foot" rule - which has long since been broken. I split my library into two functional parts: books for informational purposes, and books for enjoyment. These two chunks are housed separately in my apartment. Books for enjoyment are sorted by color, as I can often remember what the spine looks like before the author. These shelves are mainly governed by aesthetics instead of practicality.

For books I need to be able to reference often, I have a separate library in my office. These are grouped by subject matter, and then further divided into subgroups as needed - with name plates designating each area or shelf (found on etsy). To keep the bookcases from looking cold, I have little personal artifacts that relate to each subject mixed in. I have a clock depicting the moon landing in my science and tech section, a jar of lucky pennies with my books on finance and economics, a little statue from my first trip to Mexico with all my spanish language textbooks. Personal history/mementos makes it easy to find the book I'm looking for, and I think it also creates a really beautiful spot in my home.

I have always loved library/dining room combos. The table is useful as a workspace, and dining rooms often go unused anyway. If you're worried about the cost of shelves (which can get pricey even at Ikea), you could look for craigslist/thrift store bookshelves and just paint them all the same color.

I live in a bacholar apartment and as such I live all in one room. I have done this in previous apartments and never really enjoyed having to look at my bed all day. So when I moved in to my current place I decided hide my bed with custom made bookshelves, it has 3 sections each containing 18 boxes each about a foot square. Those sections form an "L" in one corner of my apartment with my bed in behind. The shelves have no backing so books can be accessed from either side. So some of my favourite novels and the books I'm currently reading face in towards the bed and books I've read are facing out into the rest of the apartment. The ones facing out are group in categories such as Canadian history, American history, British history, historical technical manuals, (I'm a historian :) ) fantasy novels, crime novels, plant and animal identification ect.

Another vote for the Billy bookcases here. I have a couple thousands books, organized first by languages (mostly English, French and the German, Italian and Latin books all live in a smaller bookcase), then simply by alphabetical order for everything, but with some subdivisions by bookcases: a couple for theoretical/historical stuff, 4 for art catalogs, 2 for fiction, and 1 for journals. I have a separate bookcase just for reference books, dictionaries, and my own publications. I don't subdivide further as it becomes too complicated.
Because I also own some artworks and I don't want to have all my space visually overwhelmed by the bookcases, I have only one whole wall lined up with floor to ceiling bookcases, for the others I have the lower Billy cases (which are very handy to put whatever tchotchkes you want to display on top). So I have wall space left for the artworks.
Plus one Expedit for my LPs.
If you move to a place that has at least one hallway, they function beautifully as libraries/book storage. I'd recommend the IKEA Kilby bookcases for a hallway as they aren't as deep as Billy.

Also, depending on the colors of your walls, you might want some lighter or darker bookcase. I prefer lighter (less overwhelming in a small space).

Lastly... as a fellow academic, I can tell you it's possible to periodically purge your shelves. Fiction purging in particular is great for rotating in new books, but some of the "readers" type of books are easy to purge, too.

One current academic and one former academic in our house (the former has a linguistics degree, but studying to be a math teacher and the latter has history degrees and works in history museums), so we've got a good amount of books to tackle (probably ~700). We have 6 bookshelves in our fairly large living room, lining two walls (with a window between the largest ones). We got 5 of them at Target and one is an IKEA BILLY. We also have a tall skinny BILLY in the dining room for cookbooks and an older bookshelf that's like an EXPEDIT in the guest room for oversized volumes and eventual kids' books.

Most things are alphabetized by author, except for the cookbooks and guest room books. Those are roughly organized by size and subject.

We also have a dear friend and current academic who we helped build bookshelves of 2' x 4's and brick stacks between. They look pretty good and allow for easy subject groupings between the brick stacks. Also, they're very easy to break down and/or rearrange as needed.

Andy here. Thanks for all the great suggestions and responses!

Step 1: Realise that you're living in the 21st century and ruthlessly purge your collection, especially of reference works. Unless it's a valuable old edition, there's really no excuse to have a dictionary, a thesaurus, encyclopaedias or most of the other classical reference works that are available (and far more practical) online.

Step 2: Shift as much as possible to your office at the university or college. This will help separate work and home life, and you may even be able to get your employers to pay for the bookcases!

Step 3: Pick a room in your apartment for book storage, whether that be your study or a living room, and concentrate them on one wall. It may be evocative to have them scattered through the house, but it will be a pain in the ass if you have to keep wandering from room to room trying to find one book.

Step 4: Try to go floor-to-ceiling with adjustable shelves. Books look best when packed in with as few gaps as possible. Rail mounted shelves are the best option providing your landlord is okay with you drilling holes in the walls, and providing the walls can take the weight. Failing that, ikeahack some Billys. Don't worry about high-end materials - books are superbly decorative all on their own.

Step 5: Paint the wall or the back of the Billys a bright colour - it makes the books stand out more and lends a feeling of luxury.

And something I meant to mention - I've taken a lot of inspiration from this series that the Guardian UK published a while back on Writer's Rooms: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/series/writersrooms

I just wanted to throw in here that I have an app called "Home Library" - it was $0.99 and so, so worth it. I use it for our huge DVD collection, but it also categorizes books. You simply use your camera to scan the ISBN and it enters the book details into the library. It's an extremely easy way to catalogue books for on the fly reference, and you can tag them based on where you put them (for instance, if you decide to use a unique organizing system, such as color, you could tag books within the app by "red" "orange" etc)

Definitely step 1 by bland wagon. I ship my books to better world books because they pay for shipping.

I saw this go up and thought, "uh-oh, here we go -- book haters, come on out and play." But I'm pleasantly surprised to see some awesome suggestions here. I'll be stealing some of these for our place!