Different kinds of book are shelved in different places in the Library, to make them easier to find.
The three main types are:
Fiction
(stories, novels - anything the writer has made up from his/her imagination)
Non-Fiction
(information books - perhaps surprisingly, this also includes poetry and plays)
Reference
(encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauruses, atlases, and copies of books in constant use)

Fiction books are shelved near the Careers Library, straight ahead of you as you walk down the Library away from the desk and the Sixth Form area.

From September 2003 fiction books are arranged in categories according to their subject matter. So you will find science fiction books together, thrillers together and so on. Look for the signs and the labels pointing to the sections you are interested in!

Fiction books are arranged on the shelves alphabetically by the surname (last name) of the author of the book.
For example, in the F section of the Fiction shelves, you will find some brilliant books by Anne Fine, Josephine Feeney, Dick Francis, and Emma Fischel.

Remember, to put these books in the correct alphabetical order, we would look at the next letter of the last name - so surnames beginning with Fe come before surnames beginning Fi, and names beginning Fin come before names beginning Fis, and so on. A shelf with books by these four authors arranged in the right order would look like this:

One or two tips about looking for books arranged in alphabetical order:

1. Some names have a hyphen between two parts of the name, e.g. Dick King-Smith. In these cases, the book is shelved under the first part of the surname - under K for King-Smith, rather than S for Smith.
2. When a surname is in two parts but there is no hyphen, e.g. Arthur Conan Doyle, the name is treated as having separate parts and is shelved under the last part of the surname - under D for Doyle, not C for Conan.
3. An exception to this is some names of foreign or non-English origin, which have de, de la, du, o', van or von. These names are shelved under the first part of the surname - so Daphne du Maurier goes under D for du, not M for Maurier.
4. Surnames which begin with St., which is short for Saint (e.g. Patricia St. John) are shelved as if the St. part were written as Saint.

Non-Fiction and Reference books are shelved on your left as you walk down the Library away from the desk and Sixth Form area.

When looking for a non-fiction or reference book, both of which give us information, we are more interested in what the book is about than who it was written by, and we might want to see what books the Library has on a particular subject.
Information books are therefore arranged on the shelves by subject.

Dewey numbers:
Each subject has a different number (for example, books about dogs have the number 636.7 and books about swimming have the number 797.2). The numbers run from 000 to 999 and books are shelved in that order. Use the signs around the library to help you find the number! The numbers are called 'Dewey' numbers, after Melvil Dewey, the librarian who invented the system, the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme, or Dewey for short!
(For more detailed information about how the Dewey system works, click here).

Subject Index:
To find books on a particular subject, you need first need to look for its Dewey number in the Library Subject Index, a file containing an alphabetical list of subjects with their Dewey numbers.

Online Subject Index:
You can also find the Dewey number for a particular subject online using the subject index search below.

The Dewey number system is used for non-fiction books you can borrow and reference books which stay in the Library for everyone to use when they need them. The Reference books are easy to spot - all the books have bright red dots on their spines, together with a 'reference only' sticker and their Dewey number. Just think of 'the section with chickenpox' as a pupil once called it!
The non-fiction books you can borrow just have their Dewey number on the spine.