To see if the Penn Libraries hold a specific title that interests you, check the catalog. You can search by author, title, keywords, or subjects.

The Van Pelt Library houses a small collection of current bestsellers including thrillers, mysteries, popular biography, science fiction, popular political books, and other topics. This browsing collection is located near the first floor entrance of the Van Pelt Library, behind the east elevator bay. Because of high demand, bestsellers are available for a non-renewable, 28-day loan period. If books are currently checked out, or you would like a title for longer than 28 days, try requesting the book through your library account by logging in and selecting Request an item.

For more information, visit our Resource Sharing guide.

If you'd like to browse works of fiction, you can go to the third floor of the Van Pelt Library. This section is very large, so it's a good idea to identify a topic of interest or an author before browsing. Works of literature generally have call numbers in the Ps. English and American Literature are shelved at PR and PS, respectively. To review the call number ranges within the P section, see the Library of Congress Classification Outline for the letter P.  Also, there are many works of fiction in LIBRA storage. These can be requested for delivery to any campus library via the catalog.