After our visit to special collections last week and our class conversation about book call numbers and library exploration, I decided that for this blog post, and out of my own interest I would visit our library again.

I have been to our campus library many times, either to find a place to study or to find books, usually at the beginning of the semester when book lists are assigned I will look for access to books through the local libraries of San Diego/Chula Vista/National City or here at our school library. The book stacks are somewhat familiar to me, I know how to look at each books’ spine to find the right call number and locate each book, but to know that call number I always visit the library’s website first.

On each floor the library has a map of the floor and stacks, the fourth floor has its books with a PG-PZ call number behind the elevators.

Usually when I search the library for a book I try to find the book quickly and then leave, but what I recently noticed at my local library, South Chula Vista Library, 389 Orange Ave, Chula Vista, CA 91911, is that when looking for a specific book on a shelf it will also be surrounded by not only other books by the same author, but the same by books by a similar genre or, if the book is by a prominent author, then surrounded by essays and other books about that author and their books. Today at the SDSU library I intentionally wanted to look around the book I was searching for, I picked Romeo and Juliet intentionally, assuming that because of it’s popularity that there must be much about it and about Shakespeare on the shelves. When I found the book in stack PR 2807 to PR 2920 I was overwhelmed, there Romeo and Juliet wasn’t just a book, but a topic.

There were multiple copies of Romeo and Juliet as well as collections of essays about it taking up a large part of the shelf, and next to it there were the other works of Shakespeare, Othello, The taming of The Shrew, and The Tempest.

Not only that shelf had works of and about Shakespeare, but seventeen others in that space did as well, Eighteen Shelves!!

I used to wonder how before today’s internet students might have gotten research projects done without the easier access that we have today. I imagined that it might have been stressful having to scour the library, hoping to find a relevant book on a topic, but now I realize that it must have been at least a little simpler than I had imagined. If I were to do a research project on one of Shakespeare’s works I’d be able to visit the stacks on the 4th floor and know that I wouldn’t only find the book, but and entire world around it, full of different essays, research books, and perspectives to help my understanding, appreciation, and reading of any book. Going to the library is not just a visit, but an exploration.