Library Instructions

The library of the Highland Geological Society consists of over a thousand books, journals and maps donated by members, sent to us for review or occasionally purchased. The library is owned by the Society, but kept in a closed access stack in Inverness Public Library and administered by High Life Highland.

 

The library catalogue is included within the Highland library service catalogue, which has the advantage that the Society’s books are listed alongside geological books held by the public library.

The catalogue can be accessed in a public library or on-line at:

Highlife Library Catalogue

which takes you to the Highland Libraries catalogue quick search page, or try a google search under Highlife highland libraries for the High Life Highland libraries home page. Once on the home page go to the tile labelled “Search for books or more”. In both cases there is a search box into which you can enter an author, title or keywords, and an advanced search option.

For example: if you are looking for Colin Ballantyne’s ‘Scotland’s mountain landscapes: a geomorphological perspective’. Dunedin Press, 2019. ISBN 9781780460796.

you could search by: Ballantyne Colin; Colin Ballantyne; Scotland’s mountain landscapes; or a key word search for ‘Scotland’ and ‘mountain’. All will bring up the book you want – but the keyword search will produce 199 titles, of which the one you want is currently number 148! Hence the more accurate the details you have of the book, the less searching you will have to do.

If you have seen the book in a review article, bookshop, or cited in another book it is a good idea to note the ISBN (International Standard Book Number). These numbers are unique to a particular title and edition. There are even separate numbers for hardback and paperback editions so you may need to search for both.

To search for an ISBN go to Advanced search and then look for a tab labelled ‘Dewey Class’. Click on it and you will get a list of search criteria including ISBN, click on it and enter the number and the catalogue entry will appear.

If you already have one book on a subject and would like to findmore you can use the Dewey Class Number. This is the number which appears on the spine of the book. Enter it in the Dewey Class tab and all the books with the same number will be displayed. In practice this is far from foolproof as it is possible to classify books in a number of ways (e.g. ‘Scotland – Geology’ or’Geology – Scotland’) and in the past there was a distressing variability between cataloguers when allocating class numbers. More modern works should be more consistently classified as most libraries, including Highland, import their catalogue entries from the British Library.

Finally, if you want to see a full list of all items in the Society library proceed as follows:

Choose any HGS book in the catalogue, click on ‘View availability’, and under the call number heading click on Highland Geological Society and a full list of the collection will appear. The order can be by author or title, or other criteria. Note however that items are only displayed in blocks of 10 – and there are about 700 titles on the catalogue.

‘View availability’ is where you will find details of how many copies of an item are available within Highland Libraries – including HGS copies. In some cases the HGS may have multiple copies, in others you may find that the public library has lending copies available. The location of HGS books will be given as “Inverness Ref Stack”, “Inverness Ref” or “Inverness”, depending on when they were added.

If you only wish to consult an item, or maybe photocopy a few pages you should visit Inverness library in person. On production of your Society membership card with a “Library” stamp a member of the library staff will give you access to the collection. Note that library staff may not be immediately familiar with the system and you may need to be patient while they find out. You (or indeed any member of the public) can request a few particular items to be brought out for you to look at in the library.

If you wish to borrow items it is essential that you have signed a waiver so that the library service can disclose issue records to the Society (your membership card will be stamped “Library” if you have signed the waiver). This is to enable the Society to retain control of the library while complying with the Data Protection Act.

You also need to be a member of the public library. In order to become a member you will need to register in person at a Highland library and take appropriate identification documents with you, or you can start the process on-line at:

Highlife Library Application

Any material that you borrow is borrowed under normal library rules. The issue period is three weeks and fines are levied for overdue items. Material borrowed can renewed in person, by phone or on-line. (note that if an item has been requested by someone else renewal may be limited.)

You can arrange for items to be consulted or borrowed from any Highland library, making allowance for a delay while the item is 

Where a member of the Highland Geological Society lives outwith the Highland Council boundaries the library service can issue alibrary card on the basis that they are a student of geology within the Highland Council area.

There is a list of maps in the collection on the Society website. Maps are not kept with the main collection, partly for security reasons and partly for convenience so that they are more readily available for field trips etc. If you wish to access one of the maps, please contact us by email.

If you require any additional information please contact the secretary.