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I hadn't ever really thought about any "system" of arranging my cookbooks, but I guess I kind of have one without ever consciously classifying each book.  I only have about three full shelves of cookbooks (80 or so), so I think I've organized them by some combination of author and a vague mental categorization like "style" of cooking... i.e. ginormous general books and reference (Gourmet books, A New Way to Cook, The I Love to Cook Book, Herbs and Spices) are together, food blogger books (Super Natural Cooking, Delicious Days, A Homemade Life) generally stay together, and all my overtly "world cuisine" books are kind of grouped together.  Then there are my vintage books which I like to keep together because they're pretty and old and they belong together!

To be honest though I don't fret about it because having only three full shelves of books I generally know where things are.  I also have a habit of keeping a little stack at the end of one of the shelves with books I've been looking at most often.  That's usually some combination of my recent purchases and seasonally relevant books.  It works for me.  But generally speaking, grouping by author is really the only thing that makes a difference to me at this point.

As someone with a “cookbook shopping” monkey on her back, let me preface my response by saying I’ve learned that even the very best system for organizing books is only as good as the amount of shelf space you have available in your home!  Since joining EYB, I’ve purchased 3 additional bookshelves and, I still don’t have adequate space to accommodate my collection! 

Ok, now I have that out of the way, here’s my system:

Seasonal/Farm Markets/Produce

Single Ingredient Books (Chicken, Eggs, Quinoa, Tofu, Bacon, Beans etc)

Vegetarian

General Purpose Books (Joy of Cooking, Good Housekeeping, Martha, Gourmet, Bon Appetit, NYT etc)

Wine & Food themed books

Food Reference/Education/Technique (latter including braising books, slow cooker/ing, Grilling)

Light and Healthy Eating

Quick / 30 Min/Express

Sauces

Soups Stews

International – (sorted by country and/or region)

Baking

Chef & Restaurant Books

Miscellaneous Books by Author Name

Big/Oversized Books

I also have a lot of pamphlet style books that I keep together in a cupboard and a shelf of “Antique/Vintage” cookbooks.

My bookshelves are scattered throughout the house.  I have a small shelf in the kitchen that houses books I plan to use in the week(s) ahead and these books rotate w my menus and season.  My laundry room is just off the kitchen and I have a tall bookcase in there that holds the books I use most frequently – essentially the first 10 categories I listed above.  International and Chef & Restaurant books make up the largest part of my collection and they are kept in a separate area with their own designated bookcases (and a small table w stacks of the books that don’t fit there!)  Yes, I need to buy yet another bookcase!

mcvl, regarding your Gastropub books. . . since their recipes were sourced from British pubs, I’d shelve those books in my International case, in the Great Britain section.

When we lived in Brooklyn we had floor to ceiling bookshelves in most of the house. Cookbooks were in the main hall, outside the kitchen, or in the dining room. 

When we left NYC, we intentionally decided not to have floor to ceiling book shelves. My wife's office, my office and one guest bedroom are the exceptions.

The guest bed room has The Library of America, my office a small professional library and my wife's office the majority of the cookbooks and all of the cooking magazines. 

The books are arranged by subject as example New Orleans cooking, by series as example T-L Foods of the World or by author as example Julia Child. From time time to time an author will move from a subject group to their own. 

Duplicates, books my wife finds not too useful and most of my books are filed in the basement along with the rest of my library. 

We have about 700 cookbooks and magazines going back to 1980. I've an additional 4-5000 books, fiction, biography, cooking and professional. 

Totally useless, like most systems, but mine are organised with the tallest books at one end, and the shortest at the other. Some never-read books are stashed behind the small books. Works for me. /Shrug.

As my cookbook collection has grown over the years I have developed the following system for organizing my cookbooks: 

I have all of my ethnic cookbooks grouped by country:

Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Morrocan, Jewish, Mediterranean, etc

All of my Asian cookbooks are on one set of shelves in the kitchen and the rest of the ethnic/international cookbooks are on another set of bookshelves.

Then I group cookbooks that do not fall into an ethnic category as follows:

Fish/Seafood, Vegetarian, Rice and Grains, Beans and Legumes, Vegetables, Salads and Salad Dressings, Resturant Chefs, Multipurpose cookbooks (e.g. How to cook everything, NY times, etc), fruits, sorbets/Ice cream, breads,

Finally, my cooking magazines are all in order by date by magazine, Cooks Illustrated, Eating Well both the old ones and the new versions, Gourmet, Cooking Light, Bon Appetit, Fine Cooking, Food and Wine.  In EYB I have added the location (room or book shelf description and shelf number) as bookmarks and it makes books quite easy to find.  Hope this helps

A disclaimer upfront:  As an obsessive compulsive, and before joining EYB, it was important to be able to find a cookbook quickly which necessitated having categories.   So I have a Word document (table format) with a list of cookbooks, numbered in the order they come into my library.   The table contains Title, Picture of Cover, Author, Publisher, Main Category, SubCategory, and two columns for location on bookshelves.  I also have a column for the price because it gives me great pleasure to see all the bargains which helps to rationalize the ridiculous number of books.

For the two locations columns, the first is the bookcase location (A, B ... E, etc. for each bookcase) with the shelf location:  (1,2,3, 4,5).  A book on the top shelf of the first bookcase is A-1, a book on the bottom shelf of the 3rd bookcase is C-5.    For categories that are very large (baking, special diets), the second column tracks the location of each book on the shelf.  (This is handy for getting the book back in it's proper place after using it if I forget to mark it with another turned book or if I pull out a lot of books at one time.)

Also have the categories labeled on each shelf of the bookcases.  Because I use the books every day, I'm pretty familiar with where each category is located, but I can always do a Word search, or a Word sort to locate a specific book, category, author, etc.  With EYB, it is now a "piece of cake" to find what I'm looking for.

My collection of about 100 cookbooks is in a big stack that shifts all the time.  I simply scan through it to find what I want, not very effective but somewhat workable.

But "my" really big collection is owned by all the local public libraries.  I rather like their inventory system, and the fact I can reserve on line.  And as long as I can plan ahead, I usually can get the book I want, when I want. 

That said, I feel both envy and fear when I read about your collections.  I can see the alure, and I can totally see myself indulging in more book ownership. 

Do any of you use the library collections?

Jeanne - so nice to hear back from you!  My mother is also a librarian.  Libraries are our biggest friends.