Contemporary Issues: Finding Books

The Library Catalog and WorldCat are tools for finding books, journal titles, websites, DVDs and other material available from Abington Library and worldwide. Because the records in The Library Catalog and WorldCat are often brief they work best for searches by Author, Title and important subjects or keywords. 

Since contemporary issues are a varied lot, I tried to include call number areas for a representative sampling. This is not all of the call number possibilities though.

Library of Congress Subject Divisions for these subjects are A for General Works, BF for Psychology & Parapsychology, E for American History, H for Social Science, HA for Statistics, HC for Economic Conditions, HQ for Sexual Life and The Family, HV for Social and Public Welfare, JC for Political Theory, QH for Biological Sciences, R for Medicine, and TD for Environmental Technology.

Books that have call numbers should be print books that are in the Arkansas State University-Beebe Libraries. Most will be at Abington Library and will be circulating books on the second floor, or reference books on the first floor (reference books will have REF in front of the call number). Electronic books will have no call number and will be in the Electronic Collection.

We use the Library of Congress system for organizing our materials. Many research and academic libraries use this system, so it is transfereable in many cases from one academic library to another. The following is an anatomy of a call number:

GT
2490
.A45
2007

When looking for an item on the shelf, it is best to break the call number down line by line, starting from the top. 

• GT <--- These letters indicate the subject of the item.  There are posters in both libraries displaying Library of Congress letters and their subject areas.  Here, GT indicated that the subject of this book is Manners and Customs.
• 2490 <--- The second line of the call number is called the classification, and should be read as a whole number: two thousand four hundred and ninety.  In other words, GT 1900 would come before GT 2490.
• .A45 <--- This line generally refers to the author of a work, and is a combination of letters and numbers.  Here, you will need to look at each letter and number individually in order to determine the location of the book.  For example, .A45 would come before .A239, because the 4 is higher than the 2.
  
• 2007 <--- The final line is the publication date, which can be useful if you are looking for current information.  This line is read as a whole number:  1998 would come before 2007
  

Use the following tools when the Arkansas State University-Beebe libraries don't own the books you need, or if you just want to see what other materials might be available on your topic at other libraries:

OCLC WorldCat - Search results will show which libraries have a particular item.

Interlibrary Loan Form - Fill out this form and email it to circ@asub.edu. Make sure to provide any important information, so we can find the item at another library.

Mockingbird, the Arkansas Statewide Virtual Union Catalog provides a single point of access to participating Arkansas library catalogs. Users can search this combined catalog and request interlibrary loans from participating institutions. You can access it at ASU-Beebe Mockingbird Catalog.

Many books are parts of series such as Opposing Viewpoints, At Issue, Global Viewpoints, Current Controversies, Issues on Trial, among others. There are other books that do not fall into this category though. If you search our library catalog by series, you should get all of the books that are part of that series, including the newer titles.