How to Locate a Book You Want

If you’ve been using the library for a long time, you likely remember the days of card catalogs—those wooden drawers filled with informational cards that told you where to look to find the books you wanted.

Those days are long gone, but it’s still easy to find books. Let’s review.

There are a few ways to locate a specific book. Let’s say you read a newspaper review and decide you want to read the book they talked about: novelist Anne Perry’s newest work, Death Times Seven. There are a few ways to go about finding it.

Possibly the easiest? Stop at the front desk and ask one of the friendly staff if the library has it, and if so, where it is. They’ll look it up on the computer and tell you the call number, which in this case is FIC PER. they can even lead you to the right section of shelves.

Another way to find the book is to use your own computer at home (yes, you can find and place a hold on a book from the comfort of your own home!) or one of the library computers to do the search yourself.

Let’s imagine you’re at home, and you want to reserve the book for the next time you’re at the library. On a computer, tablet, or cell phone, go to the library website at macedonpubliclibrary.org. Here’s what the library’s home page looks like:

See the button that says “Visit the OWWL Catalog”? Click on that, and you’ll find yourself on a page that looks like this:

This versatile page lets you search by type of book (such as teen and graphic, movies and shows, and nonfiction). So if you’re just browsing, you can stay on this page and look over your options.

But you want that Anne Perry book. So in the search window at the top of the page, type in the title, and in the drop down next to it, select “title.”

Click on search, and you’ll be led to this page:

From here, you can either note the call number so you can retrieve it next time you’re at the library, or place a hold on the book, so it will be waiting for you. If we have your email address or phone number, we’ll send an email or text to let you know when it’s ready.

That’s all there is to it. But how do you know where in the library the book is? Next week, we’ll take a close look at how the library is organized, and where you need to go to find a book or other item, once you know its call number.

See you then!