A list is a collection of titles related to a specific topic or idea of your choosing. For example: Knitting Books for Beginners or The 10 Best Movies about Baseball would be suitable subjects for lists. Although lists are meant for sharing, you can decide who gets to see your list when you publish it.
Anyone with a library card can create a list when they’re logged into their account.
Why Create Lists?
Creating lists is a great way to help other library patrons discover new works. Best Italian Cookbooks, 10 Books My Daughter Loves Best and Movies That Changed My Life are examples of lists you could create. A good list is a curated topic guide. A list shouldn’t be just a group of titles by an author, since you can do that just by searching, or a group of titles you want to borrow, since you have a For Later shelf for that.
You will see lists in several locations on the site:
- On the title details page, any public list featuring the title will be shown.
- Staff lists are created by library staff and will appear under "Staff lists featuring this title"
- Patron-created lists will appear in "More from the community"
- The lists you create are also shared with other users when they view your profile. (The exception is lists you have chosen to keep private.)
- Users’ lists are also featured at the bottom of the Recent Activity page under the heading Recent lists.
When you have an idea for a list and you’re ready to get started, see Creating Lists.
Difference Between Lists and Shelves?
Shelves are a place to gather together all of the titles that you have read, watched or listened to (Completed), are currently borrowing (In Progress) or would like to borrow in the future (For Later). You can add as many items as you want, you can make all or some of them private, and you can filter a shelf using the categories in the left sidebar.
Lists are for more focused collection of items on a particular topic (for example, My Favorite Chicklit of 2017). Lists can also include links to Web pages.
To track titles you want to borrow in the future, use your For Later shelf. You can add as many titles to a shelf as you like, and apply facets to filter the shelf if you have a large number of titles.
Privacy
By default, lists are visible to everyone. If you wish to keep your list private, you can change that when you publish your list.
Number of Items
You can create as many lists as you want, but you are limited to adding 100 items per list. This limit is helpful for private list. If you are creating a public list, fewer titles helps your list be more focused.
In order to publish a list, it must contain a minimum of 4 items. The system will always save a draft of your list before it is published, even if the list contains fewer than 4 items.
Annotations
Annotations are brief notes attached to items on a list, and are only visible when viewing the list. Unlike comments, they do not appear on a title’s details page. Annotations are especially useful to describe a Web page you’ve added to your list.
Why am I seeing titles that the library does not own?
You may see titles that are not in the library’s collection for several reasons. The original edition may have been retired from the shelves, or may be from another library. Users are also able to add titles to their lists that are not owned by the library.