My Shelves

Your My Shelves pages enable you to keep track of library items you’ve borrowed, or plan to borrow in the future.

The Completed shelf is where you can store everything you’ve read, watched or listened to. In Progress is the place for what you are reading, watching or listening to right now. For Later is like a wish list, a place to keep track of the books, movies and music you’d like to borrow in the future.

When you are viewing one of the shelves, use the categories in the left sidebar to zero in on a smaller group of titles on your shelves. For example, you can filter your For Later shelf to show only DVDs you’d like to check out.

You can add to your shelves from just about anywhere, including:

• search results
• a title’s details page
• your On Hold, Checked Out and Borrowing History pages
• another patron’s Completed, In Progress or For Later shelf
• awards and bestsellers pages
• a list
• the shelf itself.

Items that you star-rate, comment on, tag, or summarize that are not already on your Completed shelf will be added to it.

Viewing Your Shelves

1. Log in to your account.
2. On the menu, under My Collections, click For Later Shelf, Completed Shelf, or In Progress Shelf.

You can move between shelves using the links below your username.

By default, titles are sorted by the date you added them, most recent first. By clicking the Sort by dropdown list at the top of the page, you can sort by date added, title, or author. You can also sort your Completed and In Progress shelves by rating.

Adding, Moving and Removing Items from Your Shelves

To add a title to your shelves

1. Log in to your account.
2. From any of an item’s details page, search results, awards and bestseller lists, click the For Later button, or click the arrow next to the button and select another shelf.

or

1. Log in to your account.
2. Under the My Collections heading in the My Account menu, click on the shelf you wish to add to.
3. Click the Add a title button.
4. Search for the title you want to add.
5. Click the + Add link.
6. Search for additional items if required, and then close the popup window using the X in the top right corner.

Once you’ve borrowed a title that was on your For Later shelf, you’ll want to move it to your In Progress shelf. Similarly, once you’ve finished a book that was on your For Later shelf, you can move it to your Completed shelf.

To move a title to a different shelf

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to the shelf that contains the item you want to move.
3. Find the item.
4. Click the Manage item button next to it.
5. From the dropdown menu, click the appropriate shelf.

You can also remove a title from your shelves if you no longer want it to appear there.

To remove a title from your shelves

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to the shelf with the item you want to remove.
3. Find the item .
4. Click the Manage item button.
5. On the menu, click Remove from Shelves.

Notes:

• Items remain on your shelves unless you remove them, even if the library no longer owns the title you added.
• If you remove a title from a shelf, any content you have added, such as a rating or comment, is removed as well, and will no longer be visible if you search for and view that title again.

Filtering Your Shelves

You can further narrow the titles on your shelves by using the categories in the left sidebar. For example, to see if you’ve already read a book by a particular author, you can filter your Completed shelf by that author’s name.

Finding Available Titles on Your Shelves

Each of your shelves has a Find available titles button. Click it to search for titles on that shelf that are currently available to check out at at least one of your library’s branches.

Changing the Shared View

Items are added to your Completed, In Progress and For Later shelves either publicly (visible to the community) or privately (visible only to you.) This is determined by your account settings. 

Your shelves will be set to private by default, unless you choose to change this in the settings.

Your My Shelves privacy account settings allow you to choose whether items you add to your shelf should be added publicly or privately. Changing your default privacy settings will not impact items that are already on a shelf.

Learn more about changing your settings on the Privacy Settings help page.

You can also make adjustments to each shelf item individually, or many at once. This allows you to decide how much or how little of your shelves you’d like to share with others.

Private items have a small lock icon next to them. Only you can see these items.

To make an item public

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to the shelf that contains the item you want to make public.
3. Click the Manage item button.
4. On the menu, click the Keep this item private toggle. Public items are shared with the community. Your shelf item and other content you have contributed to an item will be visible to others.

To make an item private

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to the shelf that contains the item you want to make private.
3. Click the Manage item button.
4. On the menu, click the Keep this item private toggle. Private items have a small lock icon next to them. Only you can see these items.

Adding Content to Titles

Rating, tagging and adding comments are great ways to enrich the library’s catalog and to make it easier to navigate your shelves.

To add details to a title

1. Log in to your account.
2. Go to a shelf.
3. To rate a title, look for the five blank stars, and then click the star representing the rating you want to give.
4. To add other information, click the Comment, Tag, Quotation or More links at the bottom of the items.
5. Add your comments, tags or other content.

Note: For information on the different types of content you can contribute to a title, see the individual help topics on star-rating, comments, tagging, summarizing, quotations, age suitability, and content notices.