Finding and Accessing Collections: Home

Reading lists enable you to find and access books, journals and other resources you are expected to use to ensure you complete your course successfully. They can be found within your course and unit areas on myUCA.

The library subscribes to over 50 databases - collections of articles, images, ebooks and other material - to help you in your studies.

To see a full list of the databases to see the Database A-Z.

Journals provide current research in your area of study. Journals can be electronic, print or both.

Journals A - Z gives you a list of all current library journal subscriptions.

Finding books on the shelves is easy once you know how the books are organised. Use LibrarySearch to identify the shelf number of the book you want to find. The shelf number shows you exactly where to look in the library to find the print item.

The example below is for a book available at all 3 campuses. Check the location and whether the book is ‘On-Shelf’ then make a note of the shelf number.  In this example the shelf number is 791.4301 BOR.  

Note - shelf numbers can sometimes vary between campus so make sure that you choose the correct one.

Finding Books
Now you have the shelf number you need to find the book on the shelves. The Library uses the Dewey Decimal System to organise the collection.

​Dewey organises books according to subject, in numeric order from 000-999 - 

000 – Computer science, Information
100 – Philosophy & Psychology
200 – Religion
300 – Social Sciences
400 – Language
500 – Pure Science
600 – Technology
700 – Arts & Recreation
800 – Literature
900 – History & Geography

The rules are -

• Each subject is given a number.
• The complete number is called a shelf number.
• All books on the same subject will be given the same number and will therefore be grouped together.  
• Books on similar or related subjects will be located nearby.
• Each book has its shelf number label on the spine.

Following the rules allows you to identify the subject of the book as well as the exact location of the book on the library shelves, the letters at the end are usually the first three letters of the author’s surname.

For example - 391.00904 ARN is the call number of a book about fashion whose author's surname begins with ARN.

It can be confusing when the classification numbers after the decimal points are very long, for example 667.30286 CHR.  It can help to think of the numbers as money, so £302.78 is more than £302.07, so on the shelves, 302.78 appears after 302.07. Alternatively, it can help if you mentally add extra zeros to numbers to help you place them in order -

302.2300
302.2308

adding the two 00’s you can see that .2308 comes after .23.

As books are organised by subject, you can easily use shelf numbers to browse the shelves for similar and related books. Use the library floor plans and shelf signage to help you find your way about and feel free to explore.

If you can't find what you are looking for ask for help.

The Library purchases electronic books wherever possible because they - 

• can be accessed at anytime, on and off campus, wherever you have an Internet connection
• allow multiple users at one time, so no waiting for a book to be returned
• provide additional features such as making annotations, highlighting, and searching within the text
• they are more accessible, font sizes change be increased and they can be read by screen readers

Use LibrarySearch to find electronic books; if the book is available electronically, you will see a link to access it, as in the example below -

You will be prompted for your University username and password.  The read online option will allow you to view the book online.  Because of copyright restrictions you will only be able to print a proportion of any book.

As well as viewing electronic books online, you can also download a copy to your laptop, tablet or mobile phone.  You can either download selected pages or a chapter to keep or download the entire book for a limited time.  To download the entire book, you’ll need to install Adobe Digital Editions for your computer of if you are using a tablet or phone, you'll need to go to the App Store and install Bluefire Reader.

Google Scholar will extend your search beyond UCA collections and provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature.  It is an Internet search engine that specifically searches for academic resources across many disciplines and sources.  If the resource is available online then Google Scholar will provide you with a link.