The classification scheme of the booktube community

O esquema de classificação da comunidade booktube

Abstract

The booktube community comprises individuals who share their literary experiences through videos posted on the YouTube platform. They are also book collectors who share their collections and their own subjective reasons for collecting books. Since their videos are published using tags, our focus was on the 'bookshelf tour' tag. This is a case study which utilized video analysis to investigate their classification criteria. We used the think-aloud protocols to collect the data. Content analysis was conducted, and the concept of classification was employed to understand the particular categories of private organization in their shelves and where these categories originated. Furthermore, we also considered studies related to book collections for interpreting the subjective connection between collecting and classification items in private collections. The results of the investigation highlighted three main aspects. Firstly, the desire to showcase their collection significantly influences their classification categories. Secondly, classification stands out as one of the primary activities of book collectors. Thirdly, the categories are influenced by their backgrounds and life stories, although many of them have been changing their classification considering their audience’s opinion. When they make these classifications visible and explain their reasons for their choices, they also engage with their audience. In conclusion, we observed that when a classification scheme is based on the classifier's identity, it can lead to some instability in the categories. However, it also demonstrates how memory plays a crucial role in the retrieval process and how their worldview is reflected in these categories. Moreover, the digital environment influences on personal classification.

Keywords:
classification; folk classification; book collecting; booktuber community; bookshelf tour

Resumo

A comunidade booktube é formada por indivíduos que compartilham suas experiências literárias por meio de vídeos postados na plataforma YouTube. Eles também são colecionadores de livros que compartilham suas coleções e suas próprias razões subjetivas para colecionar livros. Como seus vídeos são publicados usando tags, nosso foco foi na tag ‘bookshelf tour’. Este é um estudo de caso que utilizou análise de vídeo para investigar seus critérios de classificação. Parte da fala foi transcrita e analisada. Foi realizada análise de conteúdo, e o conceito de classificação foi empregado para compreender as categorias particulares de organizações privadas em suas estantes e de onde essas categorias se originaram. Além disso, também consideramos estudos relacionados a coleções de livros para interpretar a conexão subjetiva entre coleta e classificação de itens em coleções particulares. Os resultados da investigação destacaram três aspectos principais. Em primeiro lugar, o desejo de expor a sua coleção influencia significativamente as suas categorias de classificação. Em segundo lugar, a classificação destaca-se como uma das principais atividades dos colecionadores de livros. Em terceiro lugar, as categorias são influenciadas pelas suas origens e histórias de vida, no entanto, muitas delas têm vindo a alterar a sua classificação tendo em conta a opinião do seu público. Ao tornarem visíveis essas classificações e explicarem os motivos de suas escolhas, eles também se envolvem com seu público. Concluindo, observamos que quando um esquema de classificação é baseado na identidade do classificador, pode levar a alguma instabilidade nas categorias. No entanto, também demonstra como a memória desempenha um papel crucial no processo de recuperação e como a sua visão de mundo se reflete nestas categorias. Além disso, o ambiente digital influencia na classificação pessoal.

Palavras-chave:
classificação; classificação popular; coleção de livros; comunidade booktuber; bookshelf tour

1 Introduction

Booktuber is a portmanteau word that refers to book lovers who share their literary experiences on YouTube. Booktubers share their reading preferences, including what they would like to read, purchase, or remove from their shelves. They engage in activities with their audience such as creating literary challenges, reading groups, and answering their audience’s questions. However, the main characteristic of the videos is sharing their opinions on readings by summarizing, rating, and sometimes recommending books (Sundström; Moraes, 2019).

Among all these activities, this article focuses on the 'Bookshelf Tours' tag, which is a specific moment when booktubers showcase their bookshelves and explain the reasons behind their book purchases, the significance of these books in their lives, and the criteria they use for organizing their shelves. In this context, we employed classification theory and the book collecting perspective to analyze the informal methods by which collectors organize their bookshelves. Therefore, the following research questions arose: What categories can be found in booktubers' videos? What can their shelf organization reveal? How do book collectors portray their bookshelf organization on the internet?

This article is a case study in which video content analysis was applied, focusing on their verbal statements to reflect on their classification criteria. Prior to watching the videos to collect data, we established a protocol based on several questions, as explained in the methodology section. In 2019, an article (Sundström; Moraes, 2019) was published about how Brazilian booktubers organize their bookshelves, and the meaning behind their organization. One of the findings from that study indicated that the Brazilian group were influenced by English-speaking booktubers. Furthermore, the Brazilian channels demonstrated a complex organizational system in which they incorporated their life experiences into the book’s characteristic to stablish their classification criteria. This article now focuses on five channels featuring English-speaking booktubers.

The article begins by discussing the characteristics of being a book collector and how collectors organize their respective collections. The following section provides a theoretical overview of formal classification and private classification. The next section defines the booktube community, its origins, nomenclature, and studies that have already been conducted regarding this community. As a result, our conclusion reveals that English-speaking booktubers present two categories within private collection organization: one focused on emotional attachment and the other on aesthetic factors.

2 Book collecting

Collecting objects remit a prehistoric behaviour, and it has been shaping its characteristics over the time. In this sense, what to collect and when to collect depends on the social, cultural, and economical characteristics of the collector and the period. Moreover, the role that the collector plays on society may also interfere on the collection (Blom, 2004). From a psychological point of view, collecting is an act in which an individual selects, chooses, and organizes objects considering particular needs. Those needs are successively interpreted as “[…] filling a psychosocial lack; extending oneself, preserving a sense of historical continuity, as vice or financial investment.” (Formanek, 2005, p. 327).

Regarding the subjectivity of organizing book collections, Benjamin (1987) recalls making a mess with his books, taking them out of a box, and in this moment, he said that the sweet tedium of order has not surrounded the books yet. After taking them out of the box, he starts to daydream of the relations between the books and their collector and how the books are arranged. For Benjamin; Jay (1987), the disorder in which we find books brings back the past, since owning a book represents that disorder which orders the collector’s memories. That way, the disorder becomes ordered due to the representativeness of that collection.

Benjamin (1987) also states that he believes in the intrinsic elements of a book used to put it into a certain order; especially the memories of places that the books belong to and where they were acquired also appears when he takes the books out of the box (2010, p. 229). Benjamin’s (1987) account of his relationship with his books suggests that memory is part of the information retrieval process since whenever a collector unpacks some books, that brings back memories of events connected to those works.

Another example concerning the subjectivity of the private collection is mentioned by Bartlett (2013) who presents the life of the collector John Gilkey, a pseudonym that masks the true story of a man prepared to do anything to get the book that he covets, even resorting to theft. The book provides several accounts of how a rare work was obtained by a certain collector, but the most important account is about Thomas Jefferson’s library: according to the story, it had a homey organization and was ordered by physical size. Yet after a move, Jefferson proposed a classification scheme that follows the ‘advancement of learning’ of Francis Bacon, in which the books are organized into comprehensive categories such as memory, reason, and imagination (Bartlett, 2013, p. 107).

After speaking at length about his opinion of that classification, Gilkey, the central character of the story, argued that as a collector, he prefers that method as he is interested in the surprises those connections among books reveal. He highlighted that although that alternative method delays the information retrieval, he does not see that as a problem. He points out that that measure allows a different understanding of the collection because it opens the door to contemplation of other works. The arrangement of a collection interferes with what it represents to the collector.

Prince (2011) conduced some interviews with authors who also collect books, the author talked to Lev Grossman who compared private libraries to a map of people’s brain. Besides, Grossman highlighted that the map also represents the owner interests and preoccupation. It can serve as representation to a person identity given the fact that it shows who the collectors were and are. “My library contains old books, books from college courses, books from now-abandoned careers and relationships, books from my father’s library.” (Prince, 2011, p. 37).

Asplund (2021) conducted research on book collecting as a happy object, interpreted in his research as social good. His focus was men from working-class in Sweden rural area and their relationship to reading. During his article he pointed that to collect a book is a deliberate project, which aims to preserve the literary cultural heritage and to construct the collector identity. It also encompasses physical activity, selecting the furniture to the library, as well as social interaction, whether telling stories to family members or introducing the library to visitors. (Asplund, 2021).

Besides these mentioned points, the author concluded that collecting a book was an important activity to construct his reader’s identity, to show a cultural status, to preserve a cultural literary heritage, to express nuances of a working-class man, to connect with nostalgia, and happiness. Asplund (2021) also mentioned some consideration about their classification applicable to our next section discussion.

2.2 From formal classification to personal classification

Classification as a daily life activity can be seen as ordering things into suitable places, and these places should make sense for us to find the objects again. The objects arranged at the same place must be related to each other somehow, that is, objects arranged in different places do not share the same characteristics. As Bowker and Star (1999) said “To Classify is human”, then even though we do not name our daily decisions about organization as classification, we are classifying when we are, for example, sorting out winter and summer clothes in our wardrobe or when we are organizing glasses by size in our kitchen, and so forth.

Bowker and Star (1999) define classification as something conceptual and material since it involves organizing abstractions and requires tools in order to inscribe and transport information. Classification also has categories which can disappear in an infrastructure since it is naturalized by communities of practice. Thus, to understand those categories or to explain how they are formed or where they came from, it is essential to disclose the symbolic relationship among people in a community of practice, their membership, the objects, and their process of naturalization.

In formal classifications we have systems to bridge information from one context to another promoting access to information (Bowker; Star, 1999). In this way, Beghtol argues that Classification is part of our life, and “To classify means to put things into meaningful groups” (Beghtol, 2010, p. 1045). Classification can be applied to everything connected to human being such as ideas, objects, actions, and so forth. Behind the criteria of any classification system there is a cultural context which directly influences the construction of its system and represent how knowledge has been organized at a certain time, showing what was important to society in a given period.

Classification can serve to different purposes as behind any classification there is relevant information which can help to explain its structure, which can also vary considering a formal or an informal point of view. Classification, in a formal context, is based on a principle to give suitable place to given documents in order to retrieve them; all steps of this process must be clarified for those who organize and use this information system. In an informal perspective, the organization has to make sense for the owner of a given collection, and the order of the objects sometimes are systemic but in other situations are not. However, we can always use a theory for interpreting them.

The Classification Theory in Library and Information Science provides investigation and analysis of methods for organizing and categorizing information, including categories, schemes, and structures to classify documents for later retrieval. Beghtol explains the theories behind existing classification systems, include:

1. theory of literary warrant,

2. the theory of scientific and education consensus, and

3. the theory of phenomenon-based. Beghtol considers these theories as a foundation for creating a knowledge organization system.

Theory of literary warrant (We must classify considering the existing literature) developed by Hulme, has as principle that the organization should be based on the literature of a domain, and classification does not need to be based on a philosophical theory. Furthermore, every library should have its own classification system, since the classification would focus more on the books which already exist in a library. In this way, “Literary warrant uses the topic of documents as the basis for developing a knowledge organization classification” (Beghtol, 2010, p. 1052).

The theory of scientific and education consensus (We must classify based on the topic that the scientist agrees as relevant). This theory was proposed by Bliss (1910) and is based on the consensual foundation among research which studies a certain area. Beghtol also pointed out that both these theories, consensus and literary warrant, are based on what is called “forms of knowledge” in which classification considers recorded knowledge in the world and divides them by scientific disciplines. “Consensus considers the topic of documents, but then extends the idea of literary warrant to include the position the authors take about these topics” (Beghtol, 2010, p. 1052).

The theory of phenomenon-based knowledge organization classification (We must classify considering a phenomena), contrary to the two first, is not driven by scientific disciplines. In this theory, classification should be based on grouping documents by phenomenon, that means, inside a library all the books about wood, for example, should be shelving in the same place, instead of shelving by discipline. The theory considers the users’ perception who can find all the documents about a topic at the same place.

As Bowker and Star (1999) said, classification systems are intimately interpenetrated to our lives; the same way we are shaping the system, the systems are also shaping us. Besides, the authors also deeply explain about the lack of neutrality in classification and how biased a system can be.

In an informal context, classification can be driven by subjective influences that requires many different factors to analyze it, but compared to a scientific classification, it does not show us new principles. However, folk classification has an important role on people’s daily lives, more than scientific classification (Hjørland; Gnoli, 2016). It can also present other terminologies such as: “folk classification, “commonsense classification”, “intuitive classification”, “lay classification”, “indigenous classification”, “naïve classification” (Hjørland; Gnoli, 2016).

Kwasnik (1989) investigated the principle behind the objects classified as documents in personal home offices. For that, she considered the principles of private organization which implies a choice for classification, and the effects in how people organize their office’s documents. In her research, she asked to the university’s member to describe their office organization and focuses on the intent of use or purpose of the document belonging to the collections. Analyzing and coding some phases, she found out four classification decisions she used as codes during further analysis: Location, Form, Time, and Use. Following, the example given by Kwasnik (1989).

Figure 1 -
Example of sentence analysis

After coding all the empirical material, she identified 35 categories which she arranged into seven broader groups representing the classificatory decisions: Situation Attributes, Document Attributes, Disposition, Order/Scheme, Time, Value, and Cognitive State. “Individual classification decisions could be multiply coded” (Kwasnik, 1989, p. 208).

Kwasnik (1989) focused on the uses that influence classifications decisions; however, other categories were found as subcategories and showed a strong correlation among each other. In addition, the uses of the documents in an office can be a crucial category in everyday classification because it requires less cognitive effort to organize and retrieve information. We argue that it was possible to create a common category since those who are classifying had the same purpose, even “different people (or the same person at a different time) may organize knowledge about things according to a different set of classes or categories” (Parsons, 1996, p. 1439).

Asplund (2021) brings interesting points about a book collector fictitiously named as Robert, who had two different collections: one named as “the library”, and the other as “own collection”. Robert had different organization for the two collections, the library was available to the public, and the “own collection” was not. The library’s collection was divided into different departments, and each department was divided into further categories. The first department was named as “Norwegian department” and consisting “of about 3.000-4.000 books written in Norwegian authors, or Norwegian translations of works by authors such as Gabriel Garcia Márquez, John Steinbeck and Frederick Forsyth.” (Asplund, 2021, p. 105).

The second department was composed of Swedish books or those translated into Swedish, this collection consisting of 6,000-7,000 books. And here “The books are placed more systematically by publisher, author, and genre, but also by format (hardcover, carton, pocket, etc.)” (Asplund, 2021, p. 106). In the “own collection” the organization was more systematic, and the first category was by genre such as westerns or cowboy books (Bill and Ben and Longhorn), detective novels, spy novels and war books. “In addition to sorting the books according to genres, conditions, and so on, numbers are also a significant feature when it comes to the categorization of the collections” (Asplund, 2021, p. 107). Robert also used an App for organizing his collection.

In the case of informal classification, several subjective factors influence the classification decision and the need to classify. In Asplund case, the motivation to classify was based on the activities of book collecting. “During the interview with Robert, it becomes clear that the sorting, categorization and classification of the books form an essential and significant part of the book collecting activity itself” (Asplund, 2021, p. 107).

Prince (2011) analyzed another group of book collectors essential to this discussion. In her book, she conducted an interview with 13 authors and questioned them about their collections, reasons for collecting, method applied on shelves’ organization, and many others. A bookshelf can show the characteristics of the authors’ personality; for her, when they are exposing a bookshelf, they are also composing a self. As she argued: “Bookshelves reveal at once our most private selves and our most public personae. They can serve as a utilitarian tool or a theatrical prop.” (Prince, 2011, p. 4).

Almost all the interviewed authors have started the development of their collection in the youth or in the childhood. From the many interesting results in this book, we highlight three authors’ organization methods. The first is Alison Bechdel, and she said:

I used to connect these books like Legos in a particular progression that felt like a model of my intellectual framework - my interest in how words and pictures work together, how stories and ideas inform each other. Then I had the brilliant idea to organize it all by publication date. Not only can I find things instantly now, but the spines create a curiously eloquent timeline of the Zeitgeist over the past thirty years - from Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation (1973) to When gay people get married (2009). I mean, really: what more is there to say? (Prince, 2011, p. 15).

The organization based on the intellectual framework also known as a learning progress is popular among many of the authors interviewed by Prince, however, as we could see on the Alison Bechdel’s experience, a more systematic method helped her to retrieve the books in a faster way. On the other hand, some authors such as Stephen Carter interview doesn’t have an organization, his books are shelved when they fit. He confirms the problem in retrieving his books, however, for him it does not seem as a problem. In the case of Junot Díaz, his collection is spread in his house; the genre can be placed according to the room. Liv Grossman and Sophie Gee also mention an interesting aspect about organization and randomness:

The books are arranged alphabetically, with the usual exceptions. Oversized ones, or very old ones, are kept by themselves. Also my comic books. Also none of the books are arranged alphabetically within their letter. I think a little randomness is a good thing in a library. It encourages serendipity. (Prince, 2011, p. 39).

These three studies mentioned here emphasized different aspects of an informal classification. In Kwasnik (1989), we could see the informality related to a workplace, and based on these categories, we identified the semantic categories which could be clearly related to facet classification created by Ranganathan: Personality, Matter, Energy, Space and Time (PMEST). In the second, Prince (2011), we identified three different foundations for informal classification. 1. Intellectual framework or learning progress. 2. Random organization, serendipity as a retrieval process. 3. Room availability.

Prince (2011) also pointed out that on the bookshelf also has not-book display with the same value as the books. This aspect is also approached by Pyne (2016) who interpreted this as part of identity and the bookshelf’s construction: “Putting not-books on a shelf in addition to actual books is a way of declaring one’s identity and individuality.” (Pyne, 2016, p. 39-40). These set of choices can be based on symbolic decisions in which the books can connect to each other and their place on the shelf can create categories of this organization. The third study is Asplund (2021), who showed us how the classification is part of collecting books activity. All these studies will be essential to analyze the scheme of classification of the booktube community.

2.3 Booktubers

The term booktube refers to a community of people who share the interest in books; driven by this interest, they produce videos about the universe of books in different ways. Since they share a common lexicon, the videos can be divided by tags using these terms explaining the main topic of the video. In this way, the term booktube also encompasses this category of videos on YouTube, and as a channel, it refers to the webpage on which a user posts videos, and which other users can sign up for free. (Sundström; Moraes, 2019).

The producer is named as a booktuber, also known as a digital influencer, he or she is responsible for uploading videos about books they have read, including book reviews, discussion videos, book hauls, to be read (TBR), and more. The audience who watches and engages with the videos by commenting and sharing are also considered part of the booktube community. Recently, the community has grown, and book enthusiasts have been sharing their videos' common threads in a literary approach on other platforms as well creating new terminologies as bookstagram and BookTok. (Sundström; Moraes, 2019).

Jeffman (2015) considers booktube to be a channel whose intent is to talk about books on YouTube and where book reviews, opinions, and suggestions are shared. Hence, booktubers can be understood as a community in cyberspace of people who like to read, comment upon, and hear comments about books. Albrecht (2017) describes the booktuber video as a vlogger’s style, this means that booktubers record a video in a more natural e casual way possible, and they usually have their shelves as a background.

Etymologically, this neologism is a fusion of the words book and tube (as slang for television). A literal interpretation would be “book television”. It was coined in 2011 in the United States, but this type of video has existed long before the term was invented, which makes challenges researchers to identify which the first video of this category was (Paiva; Souza, 2017). Booktubers are generally young people, and they share their literary experiences guided by their personal interest in books or by a trend launched on YouTube within a literary theme. The term booktuber is an adjective which expresses the words book and tuber (a reference to those who produce content on YouTube) (Teixeira; Costa, 2016, p.22).

Studies on booktubers have been approached by various disciplines, considering different aspects of this community. After conducting a search on Web of Science, we found that the subject 'Booktube*' between 2010 and 2022 retrieved 52 documents in areas such as Education, Linguistics, Literature, Communication, Library and Information Science, and others with an interdisciplinary perspective, primarily from the humanities.

Table 1 -
Studies on booktube community

WEB OF SCIENCE CATEGORIES	RECORD COUNT	% OF 48
Education; Educational Research	17	35.417
Language; Linguistics	8	16.667
Literature	6	12.500
Communication	5	10.417
Information Science; Library Science	5	10.417
Linguistics	5	10.417
Humanities Multidisciplinary	2	4.167
Literature Romance	2	4.167
Social Sciences Interdisciplinary	2	4.167
Computer Science; Artificial Intelligence	1	2.083
Computer Science Cybernetics	1	2.083
Computer Science; Information Systems	1	2.083
Folklore	1	2.083
Literary Theory Criticism	1	2.083

• Source: Adapted from Web of science (2023).

The results from Library and Information Science showed a focus on booktubers promoting readings in libraries and how it can be adopted as an innovative action (Oliveira et al., 2021). An analysis of the diversity of video genres within the community was also found (Tomasena, 2022). The influence of booktubers on the publishing industry (Lo, 2020) and some others were not accessed due to language barriers.

Research shows that the booktuber community has emerged as a dynamic relation between those who enjoy reading and those who want to learn about books, or anything related to the universe of books. Because booktubers use language that makes the audience feel familiar and create a friendly atmosphere in their videos, one of the results is the promotion of reading, as well as selecting a certain type of literature that is “cool” to read. These videos have been considered an essential resource in some school reading projects and libraries to fill in the gap of a lack of investment from the public sectors to develop internal projects to promote reading, as these articles have revealed.

Fuller and Sedo (2013) analyzed Mass Reading Events (MREs) through Pierre Bourdieu's theories. They seek to understand why agents are involved in creating and participating in such events. They also advocate that these events are historically influenced by the idea of 'the socially transformative and civilizing effects of book reading,' and that sharing reading can serve as a form of entertainment while being fun and pleasurable.

Fuller and Sedo (2013) focused on reading as a social practice. Even though their investigation is centered on television and radio reading groups, they argue that MREs encompass various media practices, which can also include social media such as YouTube. However, the central idea for increasing the audience is driven almost exclusively by economic factors and symbolic capital, leaving aside the reading as democratic tool.

Our analysis focuses on the Bookshelf Tour, as we mentioned, which is a moment when they showcase their shelves, comment about their favorite books, how old they were when they read the books, how they acquired them, whether it was a gift, a trade, purchased, or taken from the school library. It is also the moment when they explain the criteria for shelf organization, speak openly about the context of the books in their lives, and discuss how that organization is important for their reading habits. In some cases, they ask for suggestion on organization, complain about the audience’s opinion when questioning or disagree with some organization criteria, sometimes they even offer their organization method as an option for their followers.

Our first analysis on the organization of Brazilian booktubers revealed that the collection's classification main category centers around the collector's life experiences, and the subject or other characteristic of the book is the subcategory. Other subcategory is based on alphabetical order, size, or color of the books. Our conclusion revealed that the collector's life experiences, personal and emotional factors play an important role in their classification criteria, and all of these elements are crucial for retrieving information, as this process involves recalling memories (Sundström; Moraes, 2019).

Figure 2 -
Categories identified in Brazilian’s booktuber

However, as a finding, we also noticed that English-speaking booktubers have an enormous influence on Brazilian booktubers, which influenced the terminology used, the challenges that occur within the community, the genres read by the booktubers, the video aesthetics, and so forth.

3 Methodology and ethical issues

The video analysis involves a lot of possibilities as images, speech, the background and so forth. In this case study, our focus is on their verbal statements, considering the themes and patterns related to classification, we used the think-aloud protocols to collect data (Oh; Wildemuth, 2009).

We elaborated some questions to create a protocol used to transcribe their verbal statements from videos posted on YouTube. The questions used to analyze the video content were: How are the shelves divided?; What are the main class they follow for organizing their shelves? (Main and subclass); What influences their organization?; Does the activity of collecting books have some connection to classification?; Do they have any inspiration for creating the organization? (Influences); How is the retrieval process? (Retrieval process). All these questions guided the framework created to select what to transcribe from their speech.

The criteria applied to select the channels was the number of followers. For each of these channels, we reviewed several videos published under the 'bookshelf tour' tag. We analyzed all of them in chronological order, starting with the older videos and progressing to the most recently. In total, we analyzed 14 videos, which amounted to approximately 7 hours of content. The 5 channels were analyzed during June 2022.

A lot of ethical issues are raised regarding video analysis on YouTube or other social media, especially because the existent guidelines fail to cover all the key points and questions from this environment. Lagewie and Nassauer (2018) discuss five key areas in online video research: informed consent, analytic opportunities, privacy, transparency, and minimizing harm to participants. To obtain the informed consent from people who are on online videos is a challenge, and when it is not possible to obtain, they recommend anonymizing the data. Analytic opportunities refer to the unique opportunity to analyze human behaviour, however, since these videos are posted as an intertreatment and not for research participation, we must consider that the content does not involve sensitive information or potentially harmful.

Privacy comprises the discussion on public and private online data, and in this case, it is recommended to consider the Plataform regulations, to anonymize the person, and if information was published under the consent of the person appearing in the analyzed video. Transparency embraces the transparency in the research methods. And minimizing harm refers to participants avoiding any form of identification, and ensuring ethical procedures during the research and responsible manner in managing the data (Lagewie; Nassauer, 2018).

4 Results and analysis

In Channel 1, we find 5 videos published on the tag bookshelf tour. The first one was published in 2013, and she showcase her entire collection. In 2014, she made an update video, but she did not focus on the organization. However, in 2016, in a 9-minute-47-second video, she explains everything about the organization method. Her book collection is composed by young adult books, fantasy, and some special editions. She also has first-edition collections of her favorite author, which she mentioned the difficulty of finding, but they make her happy. Sometimes she also has more than one copy of the same series of her favorite authors.

She starts the video informing that: “This is more an organizational video when I show you how I organize my new bookshelf” (Channel 1, 2016). At the beginning of this video, she presented the first shelf and pointed the last updated there, because part of Arc collection was spread and so she decided to relocate them together to organize them. Inside this collection, the subcategory is the year of publication, she said they have this information on the red spine of the books. She does not describe a consistent standard; however, some books have a specific location on the shelves.

The aesthetical aspect is the central criteria to her collections. “Here is a mess, they don’t look very nice next to each other”. (Channel 1, 2016). The aesthetical aspect is noticed in all the videos: she apologizes if it is not “looking good” or if she seems tired. She apologizes if one of the shelves are not properly organized. Since one of the characteristics of this community is the integration with the audience, her speech is aways trying to meet her audience’s expectation, and we have noticed that this interaction also has a small influence on their organization.

Back to channel 1’s organization, she also revealed that the special collections or the collections that she liked are placed together. She also organizes the books by size, then she said: “In this bookshelf that’s the one below (pointing two different shelves on the video) it is mainly just organized because they’re all the same height they’re all hard covers, they just look really aesthetically pleasing” (Channel 1, 2016).

The two following shelves are organized by color. One with all the books together can compose a rainbow and another has only paperback books that are all dark colors. Then when she was presenting the bookshelf classified as her favorite, she also mentions that “I really love all these books on the shelf because they look really nice next to each other, and they are also great novels.” (Channel 1, 2016). She has a shelf with all the books she read and categorized as her favorites, and one of her favorite book is not there; she also mentioned that fact that they seem unorganized because they had been bought in different countries. Therefore, they had different sizes and shades, but she kept them in her collection, and in the same shelf because they are her favorite author’s books.

Showing the shelf where all the books are hardcover, she said:

Just look at how aesthetically pleasing this bookshelf looks. Look at those colors. Look at how beautiful it looks. I am so proud of this one. It just needs a bookstore Instagram! It’s just the way that colored hard covers look like next to each other that makes me so freaky happy. (Channel 1, 2016).

Then showing the next bookshelf which are paper back “Then you look at this one and it is also rainbow, but it does not look nearly as pretty as the hard covers do, do you agree?”. (Channel 1, 2016). When one of her favorite authors take one full shelf, then she names the shelf with their names.

In 2016, she kept mentioning the importance to her of shelving all the books by the same author together, but in 2017 she changed her organization to what she called “rainbow organization”. That means all the books should be organized by color and following the rainbow order. But as we mentioned, booktubers are constantly criticized by their audience, then in 2017 she said: “Some of you guys may be wondering if I organize my bookshelf in a specific way, the answer to that is no. I know it sounds really messy because it totally is, they are just all over the place and it is cool with me” (Channel 1, 2017). Channel 1 showed points we related to Benjamin (1987), as for example, the place where she purchased a book was also integrated into the history behind her collection. Regarding her classification, although she used a rainbow classification, a portion of her methodology can be seen as a random organization, as identified in Prince (2011).

Channel 2 has 9 videos about her organization. Her first video explaining her organization was in 2015, and she started the video explaining that her bookshelf is organized by rainbow color. She also said that she tried to change that, but she felt the new organization looked weird to her, because she is used to the rainbow color organization. She also said that maybe in the future she can change the organization. But for the moment, she said: “It is nice, and the progress of the color is beautiful” (Channel 2, 2015).

In this organization, all the series are separated. The only one shelved together is the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson’s collection. In this first video, she also has a couple of objects decorating the shelves, and all of them have a behind story connected to her life. In another video in 2016, Channel 2 explains a little bit more about the shelf organization, as follow:

The one on the far left, that is my series shelf so that it has all series together; the one in the middle is just kind of decorative, they look pretty there; and then the one on the right that is my stand alone and first book in a series so any book that doesn’t match those are organized by color, obviously. (Channel 2, 2016).

In another video in 2017, she starts the video mentioning the reason for collecting books and for publishing the bookshelf tour videos in her YouTube channel. “There is just something really fun about seeing all of the books that someone owns” (Channel 2, 2017). She received a lot of questions about how she gathered so many books, she answered that collecting books is part of her life, and since she has been working as a booktuber, now she receives a lot of books from publishers as well.

Further, she explains more about her organization method.

My bookshelves are organized by colors and, yes, series are split up but that doesn’t disturb me at all. I know it does disturb some of you guys, but it doesn’t disturb me because I find it a lot easier to find books when they are organized by color because I have very visual memory, especially when it comes to books, so I will remember what a book looks like rather than remembering the title or the author. I usually remember the cover and because of that I recognize its color, so I find that organizing my bookshelves by color is the best way for me to do it.” (Channel 2, 2017).

In the 2017 video, she said that the decorative objects need their own video to stop wasting so much time explaining all of them. During the shelf’s presentation, she stopped in a moment when the books were not organized as the others, because she dedicated a special shelf for books that she wants to read. In the 2020 video, she had already moved away from her parents’ house. She said that she had all the book on the shelves, so her books were not in a box anymore, for that reason her books were free.

Concerning to a duplicated copy, she said: “Something I noticed while filming this bookshelf tour is that I own a lot of duplicated copies of certain classics but that is because I love reading so much, I also love the art of a book so I am a collector as well as a reader, you can be both.” (Channel 2, 2020). In 2021, the last video published by Channel 2 at moment of our analysis, she said she could dedicate totally to the YouTube channel; therefore, she received more books from the publishers, and she could afford her desires of buying books.

Despite Channels 1 and 2 share the rainbow classification scheme, Channel 2 justifies her criteria based on her visual memory, and Channel 1 seems to be centered on the aesthetical aspect, as she mentioned and as she imagined a picture of her shelf on Instagram. Channel 2 said that her collection is part of her life, as Formanek (2005) said, the collection can be seen as an extending oneself. Although she used the rainbow organization, room availability also influenced her organization. A similar situation was described by Prince (2011) when an interviewed author shelved her books where they fit.

Channel 3 has been collecting books since she was 14 years old. And she did a live explaining her shelf organization and at the same time she was asking the audience’s opinion about how to recategorize the shelves. The categories current used in the moment of the video were basically grounded on genre, except for the series book. She also said that she was willing to change the organization, as her classification is in “a negotiable situation”. The ephemerality of her classification was noticed in the moment she explained about the many different categorization she applied and still were not feeling oriented on her own collections.

I have no idea how I want to rearrange it. …I don’t know it depends on what I am feeling and again I will probably change this at some point too because I get tired of the way my shelves look so easily, and I switch them around all the time…I am probably just going to start by like moving random things around and seeing what I like (Channel 3, 2021).

As the other booktubers, she also owns many young adult books, but in this case, she also owns what she calls “adult miscellaneous”. The books in this category are the classic literature or books that are not part of the young adult universe. The analysis suggests a noticeable transformation in her reading preferences, resulting in an instability on the arrangement of the entire collection and on the classification class. Channel 3, As Bloom (2004) argued, the role the collector plays in society also influences on the collection. As a booktuber, she received several books from publishers, as well as purchasing some books to read and to produce content for her channel. She also faces challenges to classify when she does not read the whole book:

This is the section that is like so unbelievably miscellaneous that I don’t even know what to do about it; so here we have a shelf that is kind of like adult fantasy/fantastical … I don’t even really know what a lot of these books would be categorized as I haven’t read most of them…I think they are mostly adult fantasy books. And a little bit and here is historical fiction, so these have a theme, but not so much. (Channel 3, 2021).

Even though she is struggling to change, the main class of her organization is based on the book’s topic. Some months after the live section, she finally posted a new video explaining her final organization, she said:

I was working very hard to make sure that my bookshelves were the bookshelves that I want them to be and looked the way I want them to look because I am very particular about that, and I feel like I have finally gotten them to a place that I am very satisfied with. (Channel 3, 2021/2).

During the video, she asked people’s opinion about the classification, or suggestions to improve her method, however, in the end, she followed her own criteria. In a personal classification, the criterion is tied to the development of the collection, as demonstrated in some of the examples provided by Prince (2011). Even though there are many methods of organization, as she received during the video, the collector aways chooses the method that represents the development of the collection linked to their life. In channel 3, the organization is based on genre, showing as well, her reading evolution. Then she explained:

I organize all of my books by genre for the most part, I kind of have all of my series like on one side together, and then the standalones, and like, contemporaries and stuff are on the other side of my bookshelf, and they are typically just separated by genre. (Channel 3, 2021/2).

Channel 4 is also a book collector and has the rainbow organization, different from the other channels, here she does not like to record this type of video, she only did it to meet the audience’s request. “I organized it in order of what I want to be seen in videos” (Channel 4, 2012). She is the first one who assume that her organization is to show to the audience. Related to the organization, she states that the rainbow organization "visually appealing and gorgeous." Concerning to the method applied to organize the books by color, she argues that to organize books by color is more challenging than it might appear, requiring a lot of hard work and concentration, particularly in identifying and categorizing various colors to create a rainbow effect.

Channel 4 does not mentioned whether her motivation to collect books was driven by economic factors. However, collecting books is part of her environment, influenced by social factors Bloom (2004). As Fuller and Sedo (2013) elucidated there is also a need for increasing audience, when she said that her organization is for showcasing, then it involves economic factors, since professionals on youtube receive compensation based on the number of views.

A classification system is not neutral, as Bowker and Star (1999) said, and Channel 4 classification is primarily aimed at the audience, and she recorded it because they requested it from her. The economic factor and her expected role in the community influence her classification.

The channel 5 explained that the last bookshelf tour video was 5 years ago. As we can see, some booktubers do not like to record this kind of video. It requires effort to show all the books they own, and simultaneously explaining their organization. Channel 5 admitted that the bookshelf tour was an audience requirement, since her organization was thought considering the room available in her home.

It is the first time I organized my bookshelves by genre. Usually, I just kind of organize things by series and vibes and a little bit of prayer to try to just make stuff fit but because I have more room, I did try to dedicate things a little bit by genre. It is just organizing things by how I like it visually. (Channel 5, 2022).

Since all the booktubers need to show their collection to increase their number of views, they also need to consider or reconsider their classification scheme. In channel 5, there is no focus on the bookshelf aesthetical aspects, nor she asks the audience’s opinions on her organization. Even though she has had the channel for many years as the others booktubers, she claims that she does not like to show her organization, since it is hard to satisfy the audience expectation in terms of this. Generally, her books are organized by genre, and they are: young adult fantasy, non-fantasy genres, contemporary romance, thrillers, literary fiction, and historical fiction.

We noted that the booktuber who have fewer videos on the topic present a more stable organization. It seems that their organization, in this case, is to organize to themselves, not to show them. When the organization methods are shared within the community, they came back to publish videos meeting the audience’s request.

Chart 1 -
Categories identified in English-speaking booktubers

	Main class	Subclass	Influences	Retrieval process
Channel 1	Size; Author; Series or Color	Varies from shelf to shelf	The aesthetical aspect; The audience’s opinion.	Color and memory
Channel 2	Rainbow color	Color	Visual memory	Color and memory
Channel 3	Genre; Series	Author	Reading progress	Reading progress
Channel 4	Rainbow color	Color	The aesthetical aspect; Economic factors, Visual memory	Color and memory
Channel 5	Genre	Author; Series	Room for the books; Reading progress	Reading progress

• Source: Adapted of Sundström (2023).

Personalized Classification in these 5 channels is driven by two central points: the first is the learning evolution process, and here it includes the personal history, self-identification with the genres, emotional attachment in creating categories, and the collecting habits helps to divide the shelves. The second point is the aesthetical preferences, and economical factors which are influenced by the social media preferences - in one case how the shelve will look on the Instagram- and the organization is based on visual appeal and design.

5 Conclusion

As Asplund (2021) claims, organization is already a part of the collectors’ activity. The particularity of this activity been done on YouTube is the fact that the collector can receive feedback from the community members. Collaboration in book classification appears in the form of comments made by the followers or as views of other YouTube videos, as several of the studied booktubers confirmed they change their organizational method from one year to the next, as Parsons (1996) stated, the same person may change the classification criteria at different times.

The books themselves act as a memory artefact. Booktubers build narratives about what their books represent in their lives whenever they pass through their bookshelves. Memory was found to be intimately linked to the elements of the content description.

The need to show their collection influences on their classification categories, and the criteria of classification may be biased due the audience's opinion. Some of them even had an organization before, but they needed to create it to meet their audience requirements. In this context, we have two main findings. First, informal classification is connected to people's background, their life stories, and experiences. Second, the aesthetics and economic factors were predominant in some cases, so the criteria are always under improvement.

Four booktubers created a classification scheme based on what their community wanted to see. Even if is a color classification, the reason for keeping the book in their collections directly interferes in their classification decision. They share the terminology, criteria for classification, and sometimes exhibit the same sign of disorganization. The genre they prefer to read also plays an essential role in the moment they are selecting the organization. The nature of the division suggests a categorization that emerges from their perceptions.

The classification in the booktubers shelves serves to their own retrieval process, but also to show their shelves to the audience to get more views. While presenting their categories, the audience is able to identify the pattern or the standard behind the organization, and the audience starts to ask them why some books do not follow the presented order.

We also understood that various aspects during the book exhibition can also be analyzed in further research. The cases demonstrate how exhaustive personal classification can be, and the retrieval becomes personalized due to being centered on affective or visual memory.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Natalia Nakano for her grammatical review of this article and for the incredible insights she shared with me during the writing process.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  27 Nov 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  02 Feb 2023
• Accepted
  20 Oct 2023