Galactic North And South

Ferune of Mistwood Choth, First Marchwarden of the Lauran System, expects Terran spacecraft to attack:

"'...from well north and south of the ecliptic plane...'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT Chapter VII, p. 518.

We are used to thinking of north and south as directions only on the surface of a single planet. Thus:

northward journeys terminate at the North Pole;
from that single point, no direction is north, east or west, only south.

However, just as each planet has an equator:

the Solar System has an ecliptic;
there is a North Star above the Terrestrial North Pole;
even the galaxy has a North Pole. (See image.)

References to galactic compass points occur occasionally in sf, e.g.:

"Now the screen showed a flat-on photograph of a spiral galaxy. That it was the Milky Way was made plain by the presence of two satellite galaxies which were obviously the Magellanic Clouds...
"The photograph had been turned into a map by the addition of a three-color overlay in red, green, and gray. The red covered a large, irregular area on the southern side of the disc, including the Clouds, while the green covered much more of the northern side. The gray area wandered narrowly between them, but spread out, fan-like, to the west..."
-James Blish, The Quincunx Of Time (New York, 1983), Chapter Nine, p. 95.

"...arms of exploration reach 200 light-years up along galactic north..."
-Larry Niven, "Introduction: My Universe and Welcome to It!" IN Niven, Tales Of Known Space (New York, 1975), pp. xi-xiv AT p. xi.