Is there a Dewey system for films?

Whenever I enter a person's house for the first time I carry out the same process every time. It involves a Sherlock Holmes style investigation of their book and film collection.  Now don't get me wrong this isn't some judgemental process where if their books or films are deemed not to reach a certain standard, then I summon the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade who enters, tells them they have chosen poorly and their face melts off!

No this is my attempt to get to know them better. You see I believe that almost everything you need to know about a person can be determined by their film or book collection and it is not just the content, it is also about the way they present it. That is why on Sunday while supervising the construction of our third and final Billy bookcase, I suffered a mild panic attack when I realised that maybe I was just too boring in my choice of organisational system.

One particularly traumatic evening I had the fantastic (or so I thought at the time) idea of organising my film collection according to lead actor/actress (depending on who was more famous) and director (but only if they were considered an auteur). I know, I have no idea why I thought it would work. Not surprisingly, it did not and I ended up chucking all my films back on the shelves in an extremely dull alphabetical order. Followed by DVDs and TV shows bringing up the rear.

Book wise I have attempted to be slightly more inventive. I have non-fiction in alphabetical order to start, followed by children's books, penguin special editions, travel books, history books, psychology and politics, film, TV, autobiographies and old antique looking books.

This all got me wondering what other possible, more interesting ways I could organise my stuff to shake things up a little and display a little more of my personality. So I made a little list:

1. Colour coordination - A friend has all her DVDs colour coordinated. This works in a way, because the design of film posters lends itself to mainly pink or white for Rom coms and Chick Flicks, dark moody blues and blacks for thrillers, and light blues for drama. So there is some logic in this aesthetic choice, but what a nightmare to find anything.
2. Date of publication or of release could work. It would make a very interesting way of charting the history of literature or movie making if you read or watched them in that order over the course of a year.
3. Size- this only really works for books and is suitable for the extremely obsessive compulsive of the population.
4. Genre - pretty self explanatory - although if you base the movie organisation on IMDB classifications then this could be a real headache. Mamma Mia for example comes under Comedy, Romance, Musical ahh!!!! I would need three copies.

Finally if you wanted to completely lose your sanity you could follow John Cusack's lead in High Fidelity and arrange everything based on autobiographical chronology. Now what was the first movie in my collection I   ever saw?? They would find me a week later quietly weeping on a pile of DVDs and muttering about whether 

I saw Goodfellas before Casino, still have no idea!

So plenty of ideas, but for my sanity and the safe keeping of the bookcases, I'll stick with what I have. Let me know how your film and book collections are organised. I would love to know if any of you have some really original ways of displaying them!

Photo sources. bookcases (colourlovers.com) DVDs (Gresswell.co.uk)