So anyway, there I was on the JREF Forums and I happened to mention that my household has so many books that we need compactus to store them all. And of course, being a skeptics' forum, the response was "evidence?"

This is something that I've encountered elsewhere as well. I mean, it's not as though compactus was difficult to come by! Anyway, I thought I'd take myself and my camera out to the shed to SHOW YOU ALL! that yes, we have an awful lot of books, and yes, we have compactus...es to keep them in. And in fact, the compactus (compacti?) is (are?) not enough. Our science fiction/fantasy collection (I'm told) numbers around 15,000 books. Not that I've counted them.

For those who are interested, I maintain a LibraryThing which I update with the books I am reading. When I read another book, I add it to the catalog. So there's not nearly as many there as is represented in our complete collection. Anyway.

Here's a shot down between our compacti, to the bookshelf at the end:

You can see one set of compactus on the left, slightly open, and that's actually another set on the right. The shed is laid out roughly north-south, and the compactus run in this direction too. Although they're not as long as the shed is, of course. After all, we have other stuff we need to keep there too.

Along the side of the shed we have a bookshelf that contains most of our science fiction/fantasy collection, sorted approximately into alphabetical order by author's surname. You can see here a section of A-D. On the right is a compactus unit - there is another out of shot on the left:

Here's a shot down the length of the shed. You can see the row of compacti. This is actually two sets of compactus. You can see three black handles for the first set of moving shelves, and then beyond that (although it's a little hard to see in this picture) there's a second set of three. Not only but also, there is yet another set of compactus further to the right, but which can't be seen in this picture:

Here you can see what is basically the end of the compactus. The compactus itself is out of shot on the left. Facing the camera is the end of the bookshelf mentioned previously, which runs along the west side of the shed, and there's a perpendicular shelf containing the last of the alphabetical run of authors. Ignore the fan and the dressmakers' dummy and stuff - like I said, we actually use this shed to store things other than books too:

A close up of one of the compactus shelves alongside the main shelf running along the back. Remember that compactus units move. This means that although there are compactus shelves which at any time block part of the main shelf, you can always shift it out of the way to get at the portion of the main shelf that you want. There is no part of the main shelf which is permanently blocked from access:

You can see here the two "layers" of compactus. moving from east to west across the width of the shed, there is one set of compactus, then there is another set, and then there is the main shelf mentioned previously:

And yes, there are too many books even to fit into the compactus. These crates contain mostly duplicates:

More crates of books for the sale table:

Here's a closeup of part of the perpendicular shelf which houses the end of the science fiction/fantasy collection. Clearly, this is the Ts:

Around the corner there's a couple more bookshelves, with various stuff, including some of my old games:

Here's a closeup of one of those shelves:

And finally there's a shelf of books about construction and home building (after all, Mark did pretty much build the house we live in):

And there's more! My partner Kim likes to keep the books she hasn't read in the bedroom! Here's the shelf which contains some of the books that Kim hasn't read:

And here's the rest of them:

This is my own, personal bookshelf. You will notice that it contains things other than books. But it does contain some of my favourites:

Here is the shelf of books/magazines that we have out in the lounge room. This generally contains reference books that we use frequently, like dictionaries and atlases, or books that some of us have read recently and haven't bothered to put away yet:

This is the childrens' bedroom. Notice all the books:

And just to rub it in, I thought I'd give you a glimpse of our DVD and CD collection. They are interspersed in rows - DVDs at the top, then a row of music CDs, then a row of DVDs, et cetera down to the bottom:

That of course doesn't count the ones in drawers - roughly sorted by genre. And there's my telescope too - the small one, which I actually haven't used all that much since I got it. You can also see the rats' cage (Edana and Kaela) on top, and the two shelves below the black drawers contain our collection of vinyl LPs. Boy, there's some really remarkable stuff in there, I can tell you!

It also doesn't count the DVDs that live in the boys' room:

So there you go. Photographic proof that we have more books than God. It took me all night to put this together, so I hope you appreciate it!