Locating Materials
This guide is meant to assist you in locating physical materials in the Porterville College Library. The PC Library has about 40,000 physical books in its many collections. All libraries catalog their materials, the PC library uses the Library of Congress Call Number System. This is a system that uses both letters and numbers to group subjects together. This makes browsing simpler because all the books on a subject will be located near one another.
Anatomy of a Call Number
Anatomy of a Library of Congress Call Number
Book title: Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam
Author: Daniel C. Hallin
Call Number: DS559.46 .H35 1986
The first two lines describe the subject of the book.
DS559.45 = Vietnamese Conflict
The third line often represents the author's last name.
H = Hallin
The last line represents the date of publication.
This information taken from the Online Learning Library Center.
Video
This video is to give you a brief overview of how the Library of Congress system works.
E-Books
Porterville College staff and students have access to thousands of eBooks while on campus or at home. You can access them by clicking below.
Ebsco eBook Collection is PC Library's largest eBook collection, with tens of thousands of books to help you in your studies and research.
Project Gutenberg is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks. Choose among free epub and Kindle eBooks, download them or read them online. You will find the world's great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.
Library Locations
Stacks: The Stack is our general collection, this is where the majority of collection resides. These books can be checked out for three weeks at a time. You can always renew the books if you need them longer.
Reference: The Reference section is located on the short shelves behind the reference desk. These books can not be checked out.
Reserve: The Reserve section is located behind the Circulation desk. You can access these items by leaving an I.D. at the circulation desk. This will allow you two hours with the book, but the book cannot leave the library. Many Professors put their textbooks on Reserve for their students' use.
Children: Our Children's area is located in our reading area. We have a small collection of children's books that can be checked out for three weeks at a time. You may renew these books if you would like to keep them longer.
Valley Writers: The Valley Writers Collection is a most unique research and preservation resource for books written by authors who have lived and/or worked in the Great Central Valley. This unique, special preservation collection offers over 500 titles from over 200 Central Valley authors. The Valley Writers Collection is meant as a research and preservation resource and therefore the books in this collection can not be checked out. But many of the books that are in this collection are also in our regular collection and those items can be checked out.