Frequently asked questions about borrowing items

Drop boxes for out-of-hours returns are currently available at:

Chatteris, Ely, Huntingdon and Ramsey.

Cambourne library has a drop box available Monday to Friday self-service hours, 9am to 5:30pm, when Sackville House is open.

Bar Hill library has a drop box available during Post Office opening hours, if the library is closed.

If you have lost a library loan or your library card please report the loss as soon as possible.  We will make a note of the details on your library record.

Definitely lost?

• you can avoid paying additional overdue charges by letting us know that the item is lost or stolen
• as soon as an item is reported a replacement charge will be calculated and you will be asked to pay.
• if you later find a lost item you may be able to claim a refund if you have kept your receipt.
  

Not sure?

If you can’t find a library loan and think you may have returned it already please tell us as soon as possible to avoid paying additional overdue charges

• we will make a note of the details of your claim on your library record and will search the library shelves.

• if we find the item the loan will be cleared from your record - if we don’t find it (after a three-month period) it will be recorded as lost on your record and a replacement charge will be calculated.

If you can’t find a library loan and believe you have returned it already please tell us as soon as possible to avoid paying additional overdue charges.
 
- we will make a note of the details of your claim on your library record and will search the library shelves .

- if we find the item the loan will be cleared from your record - if we don’t find it (after a 12-week period) it will be recorded as lost on your record and a replacement charge will be calculated.

You can avoid overdue charges by renewing books before they are due back. You may renew your books up to three times, provided that no-one else has asked for them.

Hired items such as CDs, adult spoken word CDs and tapes, DVDs and videos and CD-ROMs can be renewed for one week provided that no-one else has asked for them. They will incur an additional hire charge.

No; usually items borrowed from one library may be returned to any other library in Cambridgeshire.

Exceptions - the following items should always be taken back to the original place of loan:
- Interlibrary loans (books borrowed from outside Cambridgeshire)
- Music scores

Adult fiction books are arranged in alphabetical order according to the author’s surname, but fiction is also categorised into different genres or story types and these are often shelved separately.

The specific arrangement of the books in individual libraries depends upon the number of books and the amount of space available.

Paperback books are often kept on carousels or separate shelves.

All libraries have a variety of signs to help you find what you want to read but please ask a member of staff to locate an item for you if you have any difficulty.

The fiction categories are shown on the spines of the books by blue picture stickers, on the catalogue the following abbreviations are used:

AF or AF/GEN - General fiction
AF/ADV – Adventure
AF/CRI –Crime
AF/FAM – Family Stories
AF/FAN -  Fantasy
AF/GRA – Graphic Novel
AF/HOR – Horror
AF/HUM - Humour
AF/ROM – Romance
AF/SEA – Sea
AF/SF – Science Fiction
AF/SHO – Short Stories
AF/UNK – Unknown
AF/WES  - Westerns
AF/WAR – War
ABS – Adult Basic Skills
QPF - Quick Pick Fiction

Our information books are classified according to the Dewey Decimal System (see below) and are shelved in numerical order. These classification numbers are also included on the catalogue record for each title.

Each library has a printed copy of the ‘Subject Index’, which lets you look up any subject and find the relevant Dewey number.

Dewey Decimal System
A system for organising the contents of a library based on the division of all knowledge into ten groups, with each group assigned 100 numbers. The ten main groups are:

000–099, general works
100–199, philosophy and psychology
200–299, religion
300–399, social sciences
400–499, language
500–599, natural sciences and mathematics
600–699, technology
700–799, the arts
800–899, literature and rhetoric
900–999, history, biography and geography

These ten main groups are in turn subdivided again and again to provide more specific subject groups.

Within each main group the principal sub-series are divided by ten; e.g. the history of Europe is placed in the 940s. Further subdivisions eventually extend into decimal numbers; e.g. the history of England is placed under 942, the history of the Stuart period at 942.06, and the history of the English Commonwealth at 942.063

This explanation is reproduced, with amendments, from "Dewey Decimal Classification". Encyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.