New features in our catalog

— Posted by Emily 

We’ve added some features to our catalog recently—please join us for a tour of what you can do with your library online.

Fonts and languages

We’ve increased the size and clarity of the fonts to make it easier on everyone’s eyes. We’ve also added a menu on the upper left that allows you to choose a different language when you use the catalog—Chinese (Simplified), Spanish, or Russian.

 

Profiles

You now have a profile page that you can choose to populate with information about yourself, like your website, interests, and a brief introduction. The profile will also show what’s on your In Progress shelf (if public) and public lists that you’ve made.

You can get to your own profile from the top menu of the catalog. To view other people’s profiles, click their username (for example, next to a review they’ve written).

Alternate Formats

There’s now a button that makes it easy to find other formats of the same item, like the e-book or large print format of a novel. This is helpful if you’re looking at, say, a list of award-winners and want to find one in your preferred format.

List “liking”

List liking provides a way to acknowledge a useful list and find lists that others have also liked.

There’s a Like button at the top of every list you can use when you find a list that’s particularly informative or entertaining. Clicking the heart turns it red and changes the text to Liked.

At the bottom of the list, there’s a counter of how many people liked the list. Click the likes button to see who liked the list. Each username is linked to that user’s profile page.

When you see a list in search results, the number of people who liked it is shown under the description.

 Award links

For books that have won an award, the award name now appears on the page, below the description, and it links to the Explore section of the catalog. This is a great way to find books that are comparable to reads you’ve already enjoyed!

Easier movement of items between shelves

If a title appeared in search results that you had on a shelf, a link to that shelf was displayed next to the title information. That link has been expanded to a menu that enables you to move the title to a different shelf, remove it from the shelf, or go to the shelf containing it. The same menu also appears next to items on a list, and on your Checked Out page.

Some of these features started with patron suggestions, so remember to stay in touch and let us know what you think!