Books! Yes! People still read them. No! They're not going anywhere.
Books are still an important part of scholarly research and publishing and the library is filled with them. In most cases, you will not have to read an entire book. Many scholarly books, particularly edited volumes, will have chapters that are relevant to your topic even if the entire book is not. So don't be afraid to use a book as a source. Also, most scholarly books have an index in the back that will let you look up key terms and then go right to the page where a particular subject is discussed.
The library catalog is a listing of everything that we have at Princeton University Library. This includes not only books, but lots of other types of items like:
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Think about searching the catalog as searching for the container. For example, you are not going to find specific journal articles in the catalog, but you will find the titles of the journals themselves.
Princeton University Library uses Library of Congress call numbers to catalog and organize its books. This means that books are grouped together based on their primary topics, which librarians call subject headings.
Library of Congress Classification, Main Subject Classes:
| A: General Works B: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion C: Auxiliary Sciences of History, such as Archeology,Genealogy, Biography D: World History, including history of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, New Zealand E-F: History of the Americas G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation H: Social Sciences J: Political Science K: Law L: Education |
M: Music N: Fine Arts P: Language and Literature Q: Science R: Medicine S: Agriculture T: Technology U: Military Science V: Naval Science Z: Bibliography, Library Science, Information Resources |
When you find a book in the catalog, click on the title. This takes you to a page called the record. It has information about the book like author, publication year, if there's an online version available, and the call number and location.
In the catalog record, click on the "where to find it" button and a map will appear to show you how to get to the location of the book.
🚫 Request Button🚫 : You may see this button and be tempted to click it as it seems easier than wandering the stacks. Unless this book is at ReCAP or the Forrestal Annex, it is MUCH faster to physically go to the library to get the book. When you click the request button to have a book paged, it goes into a queue and our staff will get the book and bring it to the circulation desk for you. This can take 3-5 days. Unless you can wait that long, it's better to retrieve it yourself.
When you find a book you want to take with you out of the library, take it to the circulation desk. In Firestone that's on the first floor. In many of the branches it's on the main floor right by the entrance/exit to the library. You'll need the book and your prox.
If you take a book off the shelf and you don't want it, don't put it back on the shelf. Instead, leave it on one of the nearby reshelving carts. This ensures that the book is placed back in the correct order, and it lets us know that the books are being used (important for when we make decisions about sending books off site).
It's entirely possible that Princeton might not own a specific book or other kinds of material. If what you need is lendable, we're able to request it for you at no charge to you. There are two ways to get books that Princeton doesn't own.