I have kept them in alphabetical order for the past ten years now so I am looking for something new and fresh. Any suggestions? I am thinking about genre, actor or maybe director.

How do you guys organize yours?

I do my alphabetically. I think finding them would be much harder if I broke them up by genre/actor/director...

Maybe do it by release date if you don't care what order they are in. That would be cool.

I separate them by genre as best as I can (and more importantly the genre that I feel they belong in, regardless of what others say), then alphabetically. Main genres I use are the basic Drama, Action, Comedy, Horror, Family (Disney/Animated).

Besides alphabetically, I would think sorting by genre is the only other method I would remotely consider.

I've seen pictures that are organized by colors and some of them actually looked really cool. If you happen to have everything on a single wall/bookshelf, it could almost pass for art. You could get real creative and even try to form a word or picture in it.

Could suck when you're looking for a specific title though.

If you collect a lot of horror, you could sort the movies by body count.

I organize my feature films alphabetically, but have separate shelves for TV, documentaries, Criterions, and music videos/concerts.

By emotional attachment.

i like this idea!

Mine are in no order at all except for my John Wayne movies that I keep together.

My Blu-Ray are 100% alphabetical DVDs are a mish-mash of Genre, Actor, TV, Wrestling and so on

Alpha, but I keep movies, documentaries, animated, TV and music all separated.

I have mine like this:

1) ANIMATION - General
- Anime
- Comics, DC
- Comics, Marvel
- Disney

2) COMEDY/MUSICAL - General
- British

3) CRIME - General
- Midsomer Murders

4) DOCUMENTARY - Natural History
- History
- Space

5) DRAMA/SUSPENCE - General

6) HORROR - General
- Universal Classic Horror

7) MYSTERY - General
- Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple
- Agatha Christie’s Poirot
- Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes

8) SCI-FI/FANTASY - General
- Doctor Who
- Ray Harryhausen
- Stargate
- Star Trek
- Star Wars
- Willis O’Brien

In an old thread someone posted pictures with cardboard dividers (that they made) between sections. I still have to get those done.

Also, like a few others here do, every couple of years or so I revamp the whole categorization method. Sounds odd but just can't resist the urge to do it.

James

I have a shelf with all my absolute favourite stuff ; the Harry Potters, all my Doctor Whos, Tremors, and Jurassic Park. The shelf below that is all my Pixar and Disney stuff. Then a shelf of tv cartoons and tv series. Next shelf is random stuff. On the top of the shelving is a rack with all of my snapper case dvds, and overflow from the favourites shelf and tv series shelf. Then, I ran out of space and have several stacks of dvds and blu-rays that won't fit anywhere. I have no idea of where I'm going to put the A-Team complete series, Fraggle Rock complete series, and the lifesize Terminator 2 endoskull blu-ray set.

Alphabetical

The only ones I keep seperate from the main collection is the wife's exercise DVDs and the porn

I also do sub category such as:

Horror

Classics - 8 VHS
Vampires - 11 VHS, 19 DVD
Werewolfs - 6 VHS, 5 DVD
When Genres Collide – 2 VHS, 2 DVD
Demons - 11 VHS, 13 DVD
Possession & Killer Rides - 8 VHS, 7 DVD
Witches and Warlocks - 3 VHS, 5 DVD
Zombies - 23 VHS, 39 DVD
Freddy, Jason, and Michael – 7 VHS, 20 DVD
Other Teen Slashers, Madmen and Revenge (60s & 70s) – 4 VHS, 17 DVD
Other Teen Slashers, Madmen and Revenge (80s) – 12 VHS, 40 DVD
Other Teen Slashers, Madmen and Revenge (90s & 00s) - 12 VHS, 35 DVD
Ghost and Haunted Houses - 6 VHS, 37 DVD
Hitchcock and Sequels - 4 VHS
Killer Dolls/Puppets - 4 VHS, 7 DVD
Small Creatures That Hurt People (that aren't killer dolls/puppets) - 9 VHS, 22 DVD
Monsters - 4 VHS, 20 DVD
Re-Makes - 2 VHS, 3 DVD
Cannibals - 2 VHS, 9 DVD
Chainsaws In Texas – 6 DVD
Short Stories - 3 VHS, 6 DVD
Parodies - 6 DVD
Melting And/Or Exploding Homeless People - 1 DVD

ect.

And I also have other specialty sections like the Troma shelf, Asian shelf or Marvel shelf (things that might be cross category otherwise)

I have a shelf of animated and a shelf of anime (each in alphabetical) and three shelves for "everything else" (in alphabetical) and honestly it's the best system (I'd really like to combine the two anime/animated shelves into everything else, and have the whole thing in alphabetical, but the wife wants those separated).

Alpha is honestly the best way.

Do it by company - MGM, Warner Bros, Paramount, etc.

I was alphabetical for the longest time until I started noticing that my wife and our guests were more often than not watching movies that started with "A" or "B".

I switched to alphabetical within some very broad genre categories:

Horror/Fantasy/Sci-Fi
Sci-Fi TV
Comedy
Comedy TV
Silent
Action/Adventure/War/Western
Thriller/Noir
Drama
Drama TV
Serials
Animation
Music
Documentary

For a larger collection. I found that helps a lot... often people feel like a particular kind of movie. Then you can work within that area to find something to watch.

I keep two different collections, stuff I've seen and stuff I've haven't. The stuff I've seen is organized alphabetically, the stuff I've haven't I keep organized my length of feature. This way if I know I only have 1:45 to watch a movie and want to watch something I haven't I know what can be watched and can't.

bcd

I sort my collection this way too. I think it started with those oddball Warner snapper cases. Generally the companies will use a similar artwork template that looks pleasing to the eye when the spines are all lined up together.

Chronologically either by DVD release date or movie release date.

How about a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" sort of thing? Pick a title at random and see if you can connect your entire collection....

I have mine arranged alphabetically and plan to have a masterlist with not only the complete alphabetical listing but also by genre. I can't (or won't) arrange my collection by genre as many of my DVDs I have classed in more than one genre (SciFi, SciFi/Adventure, SciFi/Fantasy, Scifi/Horror, Fantasy, Fantasy/Adventure, etc.). I'll circumvent that by having those DVDs listed in their various genres. I'd have a hard time finding them if I tried to arrange them any other way. -kd5-

Same here, but I think I'll always be alphabetical. I think if I was well under 1,000 titles some other system would work, but at large sizes I don't know how one could do otherwise.

By genre would be sort of cool, but in my mind 90% of titles are mixed genres, so I'd be constantly re-organizing titles or not finding them.
Same here pretty much. Right now I have separate bookcases for TV, Criterions, Christmas, Sports & Music, Blu-rays, Exclusives, and HD-DVDs.
Aren't those the same?
That's an awesome idea! If I win the lottery and can afford multiple libraries, I'll have one done this way.