Q. How is a reference book different from a book in the Main Collection?

Books in the Main Collection can be checked out at the Circulation Desk in the Nancy Thompson Library Learning Commons, while books in the Reference Collection need to be used in the building. The Reference Collection contains books that usually are not read through, but rather are referred to, such as encyclopedias, handbooks, almanacs, atlases, directories, compilations of statistics, etc. The Reference Collection is often a good place to find background information about a research topic.