Research Guides: Biology: Find Books

About This Page

The Claire T. Carney Library has an excellent collection of books on the sciences on the 5th floor.

You're welcome (and encouraged) to browse the books in person, but you also can plan ahead and see what our library and other libraries have from wherever you are. This page will help you with both approaches to finding books.

If there's a book you're interested in that we don't have, see the Interlibrary Loan tab for information on how to get it!

Reading Call Numbers

Here's a quick guide on how to read call numbers in our library (and most other academic libraries).

The first line is read in alphabetical order.

ex. This would be before the PQ's but after the PM's.

Read the second line in numerical order.

ex. This would be after PN 6746 and before PN 6747.1 or PN 6748.

The third line is tricky. Read the letter in alphabetical order then the number as a decimal.

ex. PN 6747 .S245 would come before PN 6747 .S5, because .5 in decimal is really .500!

Sometimes the fourth line will look like this and you read it exactly like the other line.

ex. PN 6747 .S245 P4713 would come before PN 6747 .S245 P8, because .8 in decimal is really .800!

When you see a line near the bottom that looks like a year, it is a year! This goes in numerical order.

ex. If there was a book just like this except the date was 2003, it would go before the 2007 edition.

You could think of a call number like a detailed address in reverse: planet, country, state, city, street, street number. Each line helps you narrow down the book's exact location!

Finding Books in Our Library

Use the search box below to run a quick search for books, or use the advanced search page to limit your material type to books prior to searching.

How to find print books we don't own

WorldCat
Search subscribing libraries' holdings using this free version of WorldCat. NOTE: The holdings of libraries that do not subscribe, such as UMass Dartmouth and UMass Amherst, will not appear in your results. To search UMass Dartmouth holdings in Worldcat, use the Boston Public Library's (BPL) subscription version. The BPL offers free ecards to Massachusetts residents as well as those who “commute to a Massachusetts employer on a sustained and regular basis.” Search the BPL's subscription version of WorldCat.
BLC Membership
This link will take you to a list of all the libraries in the Boston Library Consortium. If you have a card (which our students, faculty, and staff can get from the circulation desk on the first floor), you can check out books from these libraries directly, just be sure to search their catalogs and contact the library before going there (especially during COVID-19, as many academic libraries are not open or only open to their community!).

Browsing In-person for Biology Books

Our library uses the Library of Congress Call Number Classification System to organize our books. If you know a little bit about what the call numbers stand for, you can browse the stacks more efficiently.

All of the science books are on the 5th floor and have a call number that starts with Q. Here are the ranges that will likely be most useful to those interested in biology:

QH - Natural History (Biology)

QH 1-278.5 - Natural History (General)

QH 359-425 - Evolution

QH 426-470 - Genetics

QH 471-489 - Reproduction

QH 501-531 - Life

QH 540-549.5 - Ecology

QH 573-671 - Cytology

QH 705-705.5 - Economic biology

QK - Botany

QL - Zoology

QM - Human anatomy

QP - Physiology

QR - Microbiology