MPL’s Fiction Collection

In recent posts, we’ve been talking about how to find items in the Macedon Public Library, and today we want to focus on the library’s extensive fiction collection. You can find the fiction books circled below:

The most important thing to know about the fiction collection is that books are shelved alphabetically, by the author’s last name. If there’s more than one author, the first cited name is the one used.

So how does it work out? Let’s say you’re looking for books in Lindsey Davis’s popular series featuring Flavia Albia, who solves crimes in first century Rome. Scan the shelves until you find books with labels starting with “D,” for Davis. In our library, these will be on the first shelf featuring fiction, which has authors from A-F.

You’ll find Davis’s works after books that have labels beginning, say, with “Das” (because Dav comes after Das alphabetically, when you take it to the third letter) but before books with “Ded” or “Dis” labels (because “Da” is before “De” or “Di”).

What happens if there’s more than one author with the last name of Davis? Then we’d look at the first name, and go by that. So all Lindsey Davis books would come after those by Ann Davis but before works written by Mark Davis.

Once you locate Davis’s books, you’ll want to review the titles, because within an author’s works, the books are cataloged alphabetically by title. So, on the shelf, books by Lindsey Davis, such as “Death on the Tiber,” will come before “Fatal Legacy,” which comes before “There Will Be Bodies.”

That’s all you need to know to find a book in the fiction section. Next week, we’ll tackle the non-fiction.