I have tried several approaches and advantages and disadvantages have occurred on each arrangement | setup. I now have a combination approach; I mainly have set up shelves by author as I seem to accumulate several if I like this person's genre. Then I sort by subject in this author's category. Then there are shelves by subject for a group of related quilting books - such as machine quilting or machine applique. Magazines are grouped by magazine, by year and month. Not totally satisfied. When I am looking for something, I end up pulling out several books and magazines; my problem is they don't get back to where they should be. I need a library elf.

Interesting subject for me. My books are all over the house. I collect books from different states and they are mixed-in with the rest. I will use this thread as a incentive to get started. I am planning a snowy day in January.
I will read everyones' ideas.
Thanks for the subject,

p.s. Last year, for Christmas, my daughter sent to me five boxes of magazines from the 60's on! I was reading for the whole winter. It was delightful.

Like you, I shelve them according to author, but hadn't thought of putting them in an Excel database. This is a great idea to be able to take them with you when shopping or going to garage sales. Will have to get busy and get the data base created and the listing made. Thanks for the tip.

I store by technique also. It's easier for me to find that way.

I would find a comfy chair, a nice cup of tea and a couple of free hours. Then I would browse in any way I felt like. That would be a little bit of heaven.

Sorted by technique then alpha by author. Applique, keeping Elle's books together, mini quilts, paper piecing, piecing, art quilts, quilting designs, hand-quilting, etc. I try going through my magazines at least once per year, and either pull out or copy patterns that I might want to do, and these are put in to a 3-ring binder. I have my soft-cover books three hole punched and put them in notebooks. Patterns are kept in plastic sheets in binders. The books I reference most frequently, or my favorites, I keep in my sewing area and these rest (for the most part) are kept in my main "catch hell" room along with the rest of my craft-type hobbies, batting, UFO's (really need to get those finished up and out of there).

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.

Just gaze at the books until something caught my eye.;)