The classification scheme of the BookTube community

Abstract

The booktube community contemplates people 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.  As their videos are published by tags, our focus was on the tag bookshelf tour. This is a case study which used video analysis to focus on their classification criteria. Part of their speech was transcribed and analysed.  Content analysis was carried out, and the concept of classification was used for understanding the particular categories of private organization in their shelves and where these categories originated. In addition, we also considered studies related to book collections for interpreting the subjective connection between collecting and classification in private collections. The results of the investigation highlighted three main aspects. Firstly, the need to show their collection influences on their classification categories. Secondly, classification is one of book collectors’ main activities. And thirdly, the categories are divided based on their background and life stories, thus when they make the classification visible and expose the reasons for that decision, they are also connecting to the audience. As a conclusion, we observed that when a classification schema is based on the classifier’s identity, we can find instability in the categories, but also it shows how memory is important to the retrieval process and how their view of the world can be found in the categories. Further, YouTube platform can be used as a place book collectors exhibit their collections.