Youth Collection Demystified- Children's and Teen Nonfiction

Today, we're moving on to explore the Nonfiction section of the Youth Collection!

Overview
The nonfiction section of the Youth Collection houses tons of factual titles for juveniles and teens covering a variety of topics, from outer space to the inner ear!  Like most public and school libraries, Ozark Regional uses the Dewey Decimal system to organize its nonfiction books (for a great overview of how Dewey Decimal Classification, aka DDC, works, visit this site).  Readers beeline for nonfiction for lots of reasons: to complete research for a school paper, to learn about a favorite hobby, or just to read for fun!  The nonfiction section also hosts a growing collection of kid-safe graphic novels (if you don't know what GN's are, Scholastic has a great overview of graphic novels they offer for elementary through teen readers).

What It Looks Like

As mentioned in the Overview section above, juvenile and teen nonfiction are shelved together, interfiled to make them easier to locate.  They boast white spine labels that contain the age designation ("J", "Y" or "YA"), the Dewey number (i.e. 741.5), and the first three letters of the author's last name. 

Left: The cover of a Nonfiction title. Right: A close-up of the spine label.

How to Find It
Here's an image of the catalog card for the above book (which happens to be one of the kid-safe graphic novels our library shelves under the 741.5 Dewey designation)...

Title entry card for David Peterson's Mouse Guard: Winter 1152.

We know this title is Juvenile Nonfiction because our catalog card locator contains a "J", followed by a Dewey number.  We know we can find this book shelved in the nonfiction section, shelved first by the Dewey number (since it's a "700", it's located about three-fourths of the way through the collection, after the "600's" and before the "800's"), and then by the first three letters of the author's last name.

Mouse Guard can be found with the other graphic novels and cartooning/drawing books located under the 741.5 Dewey number.

And there you have it- a brief overview of how the Nonfiction section is organized and how to located items on the shelves!  If you've missed any part of this series on demystifying the youth collection, you can catch up on Board Books, Picture Books, Easy Readers, Juvenile Fiction, the Paperback Collection, or Teen Fiction at your leisure.  Next up, our last stop in the series: the Reference section!

Keep reading!

Shaen