General Library Research
BOOKS

After consulting reference sources for overviews or authoritative information on your topic, you are ready to begin looking for circulating books (books which may be checked out) on your topic. 

Circulating books are typically useful for their in-depth treatment of subjects. Many books also have bibliographies or further reading suggestions that may lead you to other useful resources on your topic.

The Library of Congress uses the following broad subject categories:

	A - General Works		M - Music & Books on Music
	B - Philosophy, Psychology, Religion		N - Fine Arts
	C - Auxiliary Sciences of History		P - Language & Literature
	D - World History & History of Europe, Asia, Africa		Q - Science
	E - History: America		R - Medicine
	F - History: America		S - Agriculture
	G - Geography, Anthropology, Recreation		T - Technology
	H - Social Sciences		U - Military Science
	J - Political Science		V - Naval Science
	K - Law		Z - Bibliography, Library Science, Information Resources
	L - Education

Books in the UCF Libraries are shelved according to the Library of Congress Classification System, a system used by most academic and research libraries in the United States. The system uses a combination of letters and numbers to create a unique "call number" for every book in the library. In general, the system attempts to group together books on similar subjects, which makes it easier to "browse" the shelves for books on a particular topic.
 

By browsing through books in your subject area, you will become more familiar with the range of information in that discipline and you will likely stumble upon several helpful sources. On the other hand, browsing can be imprecise, and you may overlook many useful sources (including those which the library owns on your subject but which are currently checked out to other patrons).

To search more precisely for books, you will need to search the UCF Library Catalog or OneSearch, which will be covered in the next section of this tutorial.