The Spicer Library - Classifications

The Spicer Library doesn't have an online catalogue yet, but it does have an author catalogue on paper. The classification system used in the library is shown here and is useful for browsing the books on the shelves. The colours of the bullet points are explained below. The librarians are in fact working on setting up an online catalogue and a better way of recording loan information.

A General works

A1 General periodicals

A2 Encyclopaedias, dictionaries, bibliographies, general reference

A3 Communication (general)

B Linguistics and language

B1 General works (historical, theoretical, geographical)

B2 Language description (syntax, semantics, speech pathology and therapy), language acquisition

B2.1 Phonetics, phonology, pronunciation, intonation

B2.2 Grammar, syntax, morphology

B2.3 Semantics, pragmatics

B3 Sociolinguistics

B3.1 Language and culture (including gender)

B3.2 Conversational analysis

B3.3 Minority languages and culture

B3.4 Variation

B4 Language acquisition and attrition

B4.1 First language acquisition, child language

B4.2 Second language acquisition

B4.3 Language attrition

C Psychology and neuroscience

C1 General psychology

C2 Psycholinguistics

C3 Child development (incl. child language)

C4 Educational psychology and sociology

C5 General neuroscience

C6 Neurolinguistics

D Applied linguistics

D1 Applied linguistics and language teaching

D2 English for specific purposes

D3 Teaching skills and teaching methods (listening, reading, language lab, CALL, etc)

D4 Testing

E Education

E1 General education

E2 Teacher training

E3 Language teaching in schools and universities

F Other aspects of linguistics

F1 Stylistics

F2 Other aspects (etymology, lexicography, computer techniques, philosophy etc), computational linguistics

G ELT materials

G1 Course books

G2 Oral skills

G3 Pronunciation

G4 Listening skills

G5 Reading skills, vocabulary

G6 Writing skills

G7 ESP (English for special purposes)

G7.1 Science, technical, engineering

G7.2 Biology, medicine

G7.3 Business, banking, trade

G7.4 Other

G8 Grammar

G9 Study skills

G10 Tests

J Journals

L Language courses - French, German and Spanish

O Essex Occasional Papers, and other University of Essex Department of Language and Linguistics serials

X Authentic materials

Y Student dictionaries and reference works

Z Fiction and simplified readers

Unfortunately the library has many books without catalogue entries, and many books in categories that are either inappropriate or inconveniently wide. Thus although books on syntax should all have been placed in B2, many are in A2. But even in B2 they were together with books on phonology, language acquisition, etc. - too great a number and variety for anyone to want to browse. The librarians are in the process of checking every single book against the catalogue, and also making some changes in the classification system. This process started in October 2002 and continues. So, for class numbers marked as:

Green class numbers have been checked against the catalogue. If you spot an error in this section, please inform a librarian.
Red class numbers haven't yet been checked against the catalogue. The librarians aren't interested in any errors you may in this category.
Grey class numbers are being created; what's already in them has been checked against the catalogue, but many more books are due to join them later. If you spot an error in this section, please inform a librarian.

Subjects in greyed out text are being moved elsewhere. Librarians are very busy people and the cataloguing progress can therefore be slow. If you think it is too slow, you can always volunteer to help them!

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