We rolled out upgrades to your Borrowing History and the ability to find nearby Events by address or zip code this week, plus a number of other new features. (Everyone should be able to see the changes now, and some of you might have noticed them several days ago.)
Why the changes?
The #1 reason for making the changes to the My Account pages was to increase their mobile-friendliness. The ultimate goal will be to have the website work the same, no matter what device and what size screen you're using to get to it. Over the next months, you'll notice that more and more features will be responsive, as this project is gradually completed.
While testing out the new design (we got a TON of great feedback during beta testing this summer!), our website company also tested features to improve usability in other ways, like making it more obvious when your items are due, and making sure we use terminology that makes intuitive sense, instead of library-specific or technical jargon. The most popular features got developed and added.
Working with a company that specializes in working on website for public libraries (yep, that's what BiblioCommons is!) gives us a great advantage in that they can get feedback from over 200 libraries before they make changes. It also means that new features are added all the time. We couldn’t do that with the old website.
What's different on the event calendar?
Now, you can search for nearby events, by address or ZIP code. Youcan also still choose to limit to specific locations like before -- it's just underneath that on the page now.
What's different in my account?
One of the things that's most requested is a way to add many items that you've read to your "Completed shelf" at once, so that you can sort what you've read by author (and other convenient ways to sort, like by genre, age level, etc.). Now, you can totally do that, from what is now intuitively called your Borrowing History! Here's how it breaks down:
On the old catalog, you might remember you could look at what was called your Reading History, that kept track of all the books, movies, music, seeds, and magazines that you borrowed. You had to choose to turn it on, and if there was a glitch, or you accidentally turned it off, it would disappear forever. (Boo!)
On the new website, we called that Recently Returned. If you turned on that feature, you could move everything over from your Reading History in the old catalog into the Recently Returned area in the new website. But that was a little confusing -- I for one have thousands of items in my history, they're not "recently" anything. And if you wanted to sort those items by author, you had to move them over one at a time to your "Completed shelf." No problem if you've only checked out a few things, but a big pain for people like me, who have checked out a lot of things over the years.
Now Recently Returned has been renamed Borrowing History, and you can bulk-add many items to your Completed shelf (or other shelves like For Later or Reading Now, if you prefer). We recommend adding items from your Borrowing History to your shelves, so that you can easily sort and search them, and if there's a glitch in the old catalog (where the new website is pulling your Borrowing History from), you won't lose your history. Once it's on your shelves, it stays forever. Plus, if you borrow ebooks or download audiobooks, they don't get added to your Borrowing History (they didn't get added to your Reading History, either, actually). Adding them to your Completed shelf lets you keep track of them and sort them by author, just like the print books you check out.
What if I liked it better the old way?
Different people use the library, and the library website, well, differently! We try to go with the most popular designs and terms so that our website is like other websites you're familiar with. For example: when you request to get on the waiting list for a popular item, most people call that a "hold," but some people call it a "reserve." So, on our website and in our catalog, we decided to use the term "hold" as the standard, and also make sure that our FAQs include the term "reserve," so that people who are trying to figure out how it works will be able to search our FAQs and find that they're looking for "holds."
We base these decisions on what most users prefer. Many of these changes have been requested by many of our users. We hope that, if you're more in the "reserve" column on these particular changes, they might grow on you over time.
But there are more changes that you haven't talked about!
Here's the announcement with the full list of all the changes, including some helpful screenshots, and some background on how our website company chose what to improve.
Responsive Borrowing Pages
The responsive borrowing pages—pages such as Holds, Checked Out, Fines, and Recently Returned—are now live.
First previewed in June, the redesigned pages incorporate suggestions from thousands of staff and patrons during the initial release. As noted previously, the goal of Responsive Web Design (RWD) is to provide optimal viewing, navigation and interaction across a wide range of devices—desktop computers, tablets and phones—by using fluid grids, adaptive CSS and flexible images. A responsive site adapts to the size of the screen displaying it.
Terminology Changes
In conjunction with the release of the responsive pages, we've introduced some terminology changes, based on suggestions we've received from libraries, usability testing, and feedback received during the responsive pages preview:
· Recently Returned was renamed to Borrowing History.
· Fines were changed to Late Fees.
· For holds, Suspend and Activate were changed to Pause and Resume.
Holds Page Changes
Borrowing Summary
The borrowing summary block, which appears in the left column of each of the My Borrowing pages, now has a different look.
On the Holds page, Ready for pickup, in transit, not ready and paused (suspended) holds are grouped and color-coded. Each group has a count and its own icon, making it easy to get a quick snapshot of what's available and what's not.
When you click any of the groups in the block, that filters the center of the page to only items of that type (for example, all ready-for-pickup items), helpful if your Holds page is long.
The Checked Out block shows the total number of checked out items and the due date of the item next due. There are also links to Borrowing History and the Late Fees page.
On a mobile device or tablet, the My Borrowing summary is replaced by a menu.
Managing Items on Hold
Active holds and paused (suspended) holds are now grouped in separate blocks on the page, with active holds first. This replaces separate tabs for Active, Suspended, Cancelled and Expired holds.
Active holds are organized by ready-for-pickup, in transit and not ready items, mirroring the order and color-coding of the My Borrowing summary.
You can pause or cancel an individual hold. To perform actions on all of the items in a block (for example, all items not ready for pickup), there's a Manage link next to heading.
To encourage patrons to use their shelves, the icon at the right of each item, which you can use to add it to the For Later shelf, has been made more prominent.
Cancelled and Expired holds (if supported by your ILS) are accessible through a link at the bottom of the page.
Checked Out Page Changes
Like the Holds page, the Checked Out page has a new summary block on the left.
Checked out items are grouped by items due soon (in the next 2 days), and items due later. Clicking a group filters the center of the page to display only items of that type, helpful when you have a lot of items checked out.
Managing Checked Out Items
Items that are due soon (within the next 2 days) and due later are grouped together, mirroring the summary block. Items due soon have a colored background to draw attention to them.
You can renew individual items with a single click. Each title indicates the number of people with holds, making it more obvious to patrons why they can't renew something.
To perform actions on all of the items in a block (for example, all items due soon), there's a Manage link next to heading. You can renew selected or all items, as well as add multiple items to the same shelf.
Borrowing History Changes
In addition to being renamed, the Borrowing History page now has two display options. Initially, you can see your most recently returned items, displayed as covers. You can move all titles to your Completed shelf with a single click.
There's a Show All History link at the bottom of the page that displays everything in the Borrowing History. In this display mode, you can add titles to a particular shelf one at a time, or add all of the titles on the page to one shelf in a single operation.
Shelves Changes
The Message, Follow and Ignore buttons were removed from the shelves of other users, since these are now on the a user's Profile page.
Please bear with us while we get all our FAQs updated with new instructions and screenshots. And feel free to send us feedback, questions, and compliments using the "Contact Us" or "Website Feedback" links at the bottom right of any page on our site. (Note: we try to check for blog comments, but we don't get notifications of them, so if you comment here, you might not hear back as fast as if you contact us through the email form.)