1. Front lobby

• Access Office - all inquiries about passes & borrowing privileges; register your laptop here.

 
• Cotsen Children's Library Gallery & Research Collection - Research collection of more than 22,000 items, including children's books from all countries and time periods, together with a permanent interactive exhibit intended to teach children about the art of the written word and illustration.

 
• Exhibition Galleries – the first floor gallery leads to the reception area for the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections and to the Library’s administrative offices; just above is the Leonard Milberg Gallery for the Graphic Arts, the Visual Materials Division's reading room, and the Library Human Resources office.

 
2. Past the entrance guard

• Circulation (on the right) - where you check out books; place holds, recalls, and traces; pay fines; request material from storage annexes.

 
• Information Center (opposite Circulation) – for assistance with how to use our catalogs and where materials are located; when in doubt about where to begin, ask here.

 
• Trustee Reading Room housing the General and Humanities Reference Collection – here you will find general encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, periodical indexes, and other tools, plus specialized reference works for Philosophy, Religion, Language & Literature, History, Anthropology, Education, African-American Studies, Women's Studies, and area studies.  At the round desk just inside the room, you can seek assistance with using a wide variety of print and electronic resources.  Reference librarians will help you determine what the Princeton University Library holds to support your work, and will advise you about all stages of information identification and retrieval, from fact checking to complex research design. There are electrical and data outlets in the base of the table lamps so you can plug in laptop computers.

 
• Library Web Computers you see on this floor and throughout the building allow access to the Library's catalogs, to catalogs and web sites elsewhere at the University and throughout the world, to scores of bibliographic and reference tools in electronic format to which the Princeton University Library subscribes, and over two thousand full-text scholarly journals.  (Please note that Microsoft Office applications are not available on Library Web Computers.  There are a few machines, provided by Computing and Information Technology, on B floor where Princeton University students, faculty, and staff can use Word, Excel, etc., but in general you should plan to use your own equipment for writing papers and analyzing data.)

 
• Main Catalog - unified electronic catalog for all campus libraries, accessible via the Internet with the url http://catalog.princeton.edu; locations and circulation status are indicated for each item; for older materials in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, use vernacular card catalogs in the Gest Oriental Library.

 
• Supplementary (Card) Catalog (cabinets occupying the back half of the first floor) – records for items cataloged before 1980; almost entirely superseded by the Main Catalog.

 
• DeLong Room - Reading room housing the Dixon Collection of current popular books.

• Social Science Reference Center (next to the elevators) - wide range of materials to support research in Economics, Law, Politics, Industrial Relations, and Sociology; United States & New Jersey documents; United Nations Collection; European Union depository; documents & statistics from many multinational & international agencies; 1990 census data; electronic resources to support research in these areas; reference librarians to assist with all aspects of social science research; the Data and Statistical Services unit, which provides access to numeric data and consultation about statistical analysis, is part of the Social Science Reference Center.

 
• Reserve Services (through the turnstile opposite the main staircase) – houses required and recommended readings for current undergraduate courses; items on reserve are listed in a separate file within the Library's Main Catalog, and material is charged out at the counter; the study area is open late at night Sunday through Thursday when the University is in session.

• CIT-sponsored public computing facility (B-4-K) – Windows and Mac machines, all connected to a nearby laser printer; these have a full menu of applications, just as other CIT clusters on campus. Since these computers are intended for Princeton students, faculty, and staff, so you must enter your NetID and password to use them.

• Collections – bound general periodicals, General Science, History, United States Congressional and British Parliamentary documents; bibliographies; small collections in Art, Education, and Library Science; books and bound journals from the former Near East Collections in Jones Hall in Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish.

 
• Microforms Service (to the left off the main staircase) – 35mm microfilm reels, microfiche, microprints, microcards; some full-text CD-ROMs; spoken-word cassettes; copiers take either dimes or copy cards; staff available at all times.

 

The Library's home page address is http://library.princeton.edu