This guide is to help you physically find the book that you want, once you have identified it on the Library catalogue.

Scenario

You want to find a book called Empowering a Peasantry in a Caribbean Context by Carl Greenidge.

Step one

Search the catalogue to find the book you want, as shown in the image below.

Click on the book title for more information about the classmark and book.

Step two

Write down the classmark. In this case:

• HD 540.3.G74

The catalogue will also tell you what floor that book is kept on. Click on Location. If you check the table on this page you will see that H classmarks are on floor 5.

Step three

• Go to the appropriate floor and check the floor map, by the lifts, to see approximately where your book will be
  
• Now go to that section and look for the shelves beginning with the same letters as the book you are looking for (in this case HD)
  
• Read each part of the classmark separately and in order
  • Example: HD 540.3.G74
• Split the classmark into parts, spliting letters from numbers
  • HD 540.3 G 74
• Look for HD labelled books first. You will find them in alphabetic order, so they will be just after the HC books
• The end of the shelves are labelled with the range of filed classmarks. There are also signs and floor plans to help you locate where books are filed
  
• Having found books starting with HD then within the HD books look for the number 540.3
• In this example HD 540.3 will be somewhere between HD 75 and HD 649
  
• Once you have found the books HD 540.3 then within that section, look for G
• Once you have found the G’s then look for 74
  • Note, the 74 is a decimal number as it comes after the point in the class .G74 and so should be read as 0.74.
  • In this example (far right) G74 would come after G733
  • Note, letters come before numbers. Letters are filed alphabetically and numbers in ascending order.
    
    
• The Education section has its own classification system, but the way of looking for education books remains the same.
  • Eg. 371.395.WES
  • 371 395 WES
• Read each part of the classmark separately and in order. Look for the 371 labelled books first (they will be in numerical order)
  • then look for .395 within the 371 books
  • then look for WES within the 371.395 books