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Hi neB.
Are you using a whole sky planisphere? The way you generally use one for our latitudes is to hold it overhead, face south, with E on the planisphere to your left, and S in front. When you've identified a major constellation, such as Scorpius or Orion, face that part of the sky and orient the planisphere so it matches that part of the sky.
The Chandler version is excellent, in that it is double-sided, so that for the N part of the sky youi simply face N instead of south and use the other side.
For star charts used for finding Deep Sky Objects, just get the right chart for the area you are looking at; hopefully you can identify a at least a couple of stars then just orient the map accordingly.
That North is at the top is just a convention. If you were turn a globe of the world upside down it would be just as accurate.
My favourite star-hopping set of charts is the Herald-Bobroff Astrolatlas. It has one series of charts for looking at the northern constellations oriented so that you don't have to read the names of objects upside-down.
Hope this spiel helps.
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