Classical Studies: Find Books

Materials in the library's collection - including books, e-books, DVDs, and many other formats - can be located through the Find Anything search box on the library homepage.  Articles can be found with the same search.

Specific call numbers for books are found in the online catalog, but when browsing the shelves, it helps to know something about them. Books about history can be found shelved in the library under the following Library of Congress call numbers:

B -- Philosophy

• B108-708 Ancient Philosophy

C -- Auxiliary Sciences of History

• CB History of Civilization
• CC Archaeology

D -- World History

• D History (General)
• D51-90 Ancient History
• DE History of the Greco-Roman world

PA -- Greek & Latin Language & Literature

The broad topics indicated by the first letter of the "call number" are often broken down into subtopics with a second letter, and are then refined in much greater detail with the addition of numbers. A full listing of Library of Congress call numbers can be found here: http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/lcco/

The digits in these call numbers are read as counting numbers, not as decimals as in the Dewey Decimal system. This means that DL 1175 is found between DL 1174 and DL 1179, well after DL 117 or DL 118.

This arrangement of books by subject matter makes shelf-browsing convenient. If you find a useful book, the books nearby on the shelf are likely to be closely related in topic.

Note that these call numbers are used both for the circulating collection, which is spread among the first, third, and fourth floors of Olin, and in the reference collection, which is entirely on the second floor.

If Olin doesn't have the book you need, search Worldcat Local:

Single-search access to 1.291 billion items from Olin and more than 9,000 libraries around the world. These days, WorldCat includes more than just books, so if you are interested in books only, limit your search to just books. Use Interlibrary Loan to request the books you find in other libraries.

You can also search millions of books, magazines, and newspapers digitized through the Google Books project.  Levels of access depend on copyright status and publisher permissions--so you may find a citation, snippet, limited view, or full text.  Best used for electronic access to books in the public domain (i.e., works published before 1924)