Website: Collections

Print and Electronic Collections

Books
Circulating books are shelved in Library of Congress call number order on the 2nd and 3rd floors. The call numbers help arrange the books according to broad subject areas. While you are welcome to browse the shelves according to these call numbers, related materials may be in other subject areas. You can conduct a more complete subject search through the catalog.

Reference Collections
Electronic reference resources include many general and specialized indexes and abstracts of periodicals, newspapers, and books on all topics. Some contain full-text articles. World Wide Web access is also provided for reference and research purposes. Print reference resources are located in the reference area. These include general and specialized encyclopedias, almanacs, atlases, directories, dictionaries, statistics, literary criticism, brief biographies, telephone books, Oregon college catalogs, maps, and some print indexes and abstracts. Librarians have collected these multiple formats into reference guides.

Reserve Collection
Some reserve materials are available electronically, while others, in print format, are shelved behind the Checkout Desk. All reserve materials are listed in the catalog. In addition to materials placed on reserve by faculty for specific courses, the reserve collection includes previous master's comps and publications by and about Western Oregon University (history, culture, governance, plans and policies, etc.).

Periodicals and Newspapers
All periodicals and newspapers are shelved alphabetically by title on the 1st and 2nd floors. Microfilm and microfiche copies of some older issues are found in the microforms area, also on the 1st floor. Additionally, about 10,000 journal and newspaper titles are held electronically through various databases. Search the Journal Title Search for the library’s holdings in all formats.

Government Documents
Hamersly Library is a complete depository for current Oregon documents issued by various state agencies. These are separated from the book collection and are housed on the 2nd floor north. They are arranged by agency and their call numbers are found in the catalog. The library has a limited collection of U.S. documents selected on the basis of WOU's institutional strengths. Most of these materials are integrated with the regular book collection, but some are housed on the second floor north near the Oregon Documents. Increasingly, both state and federal government documents are available in full text online. Web pages exist to help you find these documents, and additional help is available at the Reference Desk.

Juvenile Collection
The library has a collection of children's and young adult literature located on the north end of the second floor. It includes picture books, fiction and nonfiction titles and Newbery, Caldecott and other award winners.

K-12 Curricular materials and State-Adopted Textbooks
Various publishers' K-12 textbooks, kits, and other curricular materials on all subjects, as well as state-adopted textbooks for Oregon elementary and secondary schools and other curriculum materials, are located on the 2nd floor.

Microforms
Microfiche and microfilm collections, along with readers, scanners and printers, are housed on the first floor. In addition to back issues of newspapers and periodicals, microforms collections include ERIC documents, criminal justice microfiche and government documents.

Audiovisual Materials
Videos and other non-print materials are located in the northeast corner of the 2nd floor. The materials are searchable in the catalog and are arranged in call number order on the shelf.

University Archives and Robert W. Straub Archives
The archives holds a collection of historical materials produced by or about the university, as well as materials concerning the career of Governor Robert Straub. Staff are available to help locate information and photographs about past and present student life, university activities, history of campus buildings, and biographical information about former faculty and alumni.

Library of Congress Call Number Areas

Most academic libraries, including the Hamersly Library, categorize their collections with a system developed by the Library of Congress. Materials are classified by subject, but unlike the Dewey Decimal system (in which subjects are assigned numbers), the subjects are assigned letters. The first table below shows the general outline of the scheme; the second provides some detail. The Library of Congress provides a further breakdown of the subclasses.

The broad subject areas designated by the letters are divided into smaller subject areas by adding one or two additional letters and a set of numbers. The call number of a book or other item, based on this classification scheme, determines the item's placement in the shelves.

Library of Congress Call NumbersLetters (as shown in the above two tables) are combined with numbers to create call numbers, which serve two purposes: to indicate where books are located, and to group material on the shelf by subject.

Example: A 1990 book by Cheryl Simon Silver entitled One Earth, One Future has the
call number GF 75 .S55 1990