Star technique
An idea (just for home use) is what I did with mixed general books years ago. I wanted them to be placed in bookshelves in order of height so I bought those coloured star stickers from the newsagents, the type teachers may have put on a small students work back in the day. The books remained in height order but all the gardening ones got a green star on the bottom edge of the bound part of the book about 1/4' from the bottom. All knitting books got a purple star, and all sewing got yellow, and patchwork got a red star. In the case of the all patchwork books, they (I don't mean they were in a case) they would then have a second star above their red one, say gold, if they were applique, and maybe silver if they were about scrap quilts, or blue for machine quilting. Still had their initial red star at the base of the bound edge, but a different colour above the red star for the second categorising.