Books & eBooks

The Library’s collection includes both academic eBooks and other fiction and non-fiction eBooks available through the Libby platform. All academic eBooks will appear in your search results in the Library Catalogue. Those available through Libby are also in our Catalogue but can also be searched separately through the Libby platform, which you also need in order to access these titles.

Books are shelved in separate sequences according to size: octavo, quarto (4to.), small folio or folio. The larger size indicators appear at the end of the shelf-mark in the Library's catalogue entries, for example, Architecture, 4to., Cinema, &c, sm. Folio, or Engraving, folio. If there is no size indicator, the volume is octavo-sized.

Within each size sequence, the subject categories are arranged alphabetically. A detailed floor plan for the Art Room is available from the Issue Desk.

The ground floor Art Room houses 4to. material, and begins on the far left of the room on the shelves immediately next to the lift. The 4to. sequence runs clockwise around the outer wall to the glass door and then continues in a clockwise direction on the left side of the inner arc of shelves in the centre of the room. The sequence then continues on the outer shelves of the inner arc running anti-clockwise back to the free-standing shelves directly facing the lift. The remainder of the 4to. sequence is shelved on the balustrade on the gallery running anti- clockwise from the top of the stairs.

The octavo sequence is housed on the Mezzanine, easily reached by the T S Eliot House stairs or lift from the 1st floor. It continues on the Mezzanine of the Central Stack, up four steps from T S Eliot House. The small folio sequence is located next to the end of octavo, in the Central Stack.

Art folio titles are stored separately and should be requested at the Issue Desk.

If the Library holds a significant number of books about a single artist, including critical works, the name of the artist appears as part of the shelf-mark in the catalogue entry:-

A. Painting, Picasso
A. Artistic Anatomy, Stubbs

Catalogues of works from a single gallery are shelved alphabetically under the name of the gallery, within the appropriate subject category. For example, A. Painting, A. Sculpture, etc for exhibitions covering works in a single medium, or A. Art (Gen.) for exhibitions including works in more than one medium.

Loan exhibition catalogues (i.e. with works from a number of collections) are shelved alphabetically by title of the exhibition. Catalogues from exhibitions of a single artist, however, are treated as standard monographs and shelved under the name of the artist, within the relevant subject category (e.g. A. Painting), and then alphabetically by author or by gallery.

Always check the Library Catalogue carefully for the ‘shelved under’ information which will help you locate the book within the shelfmark sequence.