When completing a degree, people used to ask…what are you reading? This was a reflection of the amount of time that was required of students to read, to gain the required knowledge around their chosen subject.
There was a reading week built into each term to allow the more ‘dedicated’ of students to catch up on their reading (for others, this meant that they could go home a week earlier), but it was acknowledged that reading was an essential element in gaining higher levels of critical understanding, fundamental to academic writing.
Lecturers still advise students to read, that reading around your chosen subject will increase your knowledge and insight around a topic or subject. But how do you know what to read? Academic reading is not the same as ‘just’ reading. It has a specific purpose, and requires a strategy. It involves thinking strategically about your topic, using keywords to locate relevant articles, asking questions, linking concepts between one piece of work and another. Interpreting and critically analysing the text.
At this time of year, with final examinations and assignment deadlines fast approaching, the library is the place to be. Yet upon entering the library how do you know where to go, where to start? How to find the ‘perfect book’?
Contrary to popular belief books in libraries are not arranged by colour, size or alphabetically. There is a system to the way that books are arranged it is called ‘The Dewey Decimal Classification System’. They are arranged around ten broad classification categories.
Dewey is your new BFF! If you know the ‘classification or call number’ of your topic area, then you can locate books either on-line through you library catalogue system (Find it! for students at USW ) or actually, physically in person, in the library book stock. For instance Public Relations has the call number (The numerical number on the spine of the book) 659.2, Brands 658.827, Social Media Marketing 658.81, Research Methods 300.72. By following the library guidance system (numbers at the end of each stack of books) you will ‘find your perfect book’.
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