Education

The Children's and Young Adult (YA) Collection, formerly known as the Juvenile Collection, contains books meant for children of all ages and young adults. It is primarily meant to support curriculum related to children's and YA literature in the College of Education and at UO, but is also available for use by families and other interested readers. If you have suggestions for the collection, please email the Education Librarian, using the contact information on this page. 

You can limit your search to books in the Children's and YA Collection by going to the Advanced Search option in LibrarySearch. Under "Search Scope," select "Children's and YA Collection." You can then do a keyword, title, or author search depending on what you're looking for. 

The Children's and YA Collection is located on the third floor of Knight Library on the south side of the building.

The Children's and YA Collection is not strictly organized by reading level and contains books for all age groups from pre-school to young adult. The collection is organized using Library of Congress Classification (LCC), similar to the rest of the UO Libraries collections. This is a different system than you would likely find in most public and school libraries, which may be organized using the Dewey Decimal System or alphabetically by author and divided by reading level.

Browsing the collection

In LCC, books with call numbers beginning with PZ will often be fiction books meant for younger readers (children's and middle grade books). Books that have call numbers beginning with PS in this collection will usually be for young adult readers. Non-fiction books will have call numbers corresponding to their subject matter and will not be separated by reading level. See the LCC link above for more information on which subject areas correspond with which call numbers. 

You can use LibrarySearch to search the Children's and YA Collection by keyword to search for books related to specific topics (See How can I find books in the Children's and Young Adult Collection). 

Finding information about reading level in LibrarySearch

If you are ever unsure about the reading level of a book, you can view the catalog record in LibrarySearch for more information and scroll down to the "Details" section. There is often information about the audience for a book and any awards the book has won. Sometimes the "genre" field will also give you a clue about the intended reading level of a title. 

There are a number of awards given out for children's and young adult literature. Here is a sample list of some of the children's book award-winners that the UO Libraries focuses on collecting: