Table of Contents
Bookbags
What are Bookbags? What are they used for?
Bookbags are containers. They can be used for any number of purposes. For example, to keep track of what books you have read, books you would like to read, to maintain a class reading list, to maintain a reading list for a book club, to keep a list of books you would like for your birthday. There are an unlimited number of uses.
How do I create bookbags?
There are two ways to create a bookbag. First, through the My Account area. Click on the My Bookbags tab. Under the Create a new Bookbag section, enter in a name for your bookbag into the text box. Decide if you would like to share the contents of the bookbag or not, and click the Submit button.
The second method requires that you first login to the library catalog using your library username and password, via the My Account link. After logging in, perform a search, and select a title you are interested in. On the Title Detail Page, there is a drop down labeled More Actions, in the upper-left. The last option in the drop-down is Create a new bookbag. Clicking it will prompt for a bookbag name and create a new bookbag.
What does "Share this bookbag" mean?
Bookbags can either be private, and only viewable by the owner; or public, and viewable by anyone who knows where the bookbag resides. By default, all bookbags are private, and you must explicitly instruct the system to allow others to view the contents of a bookbag. You can elect to share a bookbag from the My Account area, My Bookbags section.
Once you have shared a bookbag, some links will appear next to that bookbag in the "Shared" column of your "My Bookbags" page of "My Account." One is labeled "(View)" and the other is an orange image representing syndicated content. Clicking view will take you to a list of the items in that bookbag as viewed in the html only version of the staff client. Clicking the syndicated content image will take you to an RSS feed for that bookbag to which a user could subscribe to find out when additional books are added to this bookbag. If you wish to share your bookbag with others, you can provide them with the web address for either the html version or the rss version, by clicking the appropriate link and copying the web address to someplace others can find it.
There are other ways in which the list of bookbag items can be viewed that aren't as obvious as the two described above. To view some of the alternative display options, take the web address for one of your own bookbags from one of the links described above (ex. http://yourcatalogaddress.com/opac/extras/feed/bookbag/preferred_format/###). ### represents the number assigned to your particular bookbag. yourcatalogaddress should be replaced with the address for your opac. And preferred_format can be any of the following:
- html
- html-full
- htmlholdings
- htmlholdings-full
- rss2
- rss2-full
- atom
- atom-full
- opac
Of these, opac is perhaps the most useful for linking from the library web site, because it displays the list in the full opac, rather than the html only version of the opac.
How do I add items to a bookbag?
Login to the online catalog by clicking the My Account link. Login using your username and password. This will authenticate you with the system, and bring you to an Account Summary screen. Next, search the catalog normally for the item you would like to add to your bookbag. From the resulting search hitlist, select the title you are interested in. In the upper-right corner of the Record Summary page, there is a dropdown labeled More Actions. From that dropdown, select the bookbag you would like to place this title in. Alternatively, you can create a new bookbag from this dropdown.
How do I remove items from a bookbag?
Login to the online catalog by clicking the My Account link. Login using your username and password. Click on the My Bookbags tab. Click on the name of the bookbag you would like to remove the item from. The items in the bookbag will appear at the bottom of the screen. Click the remove link next to the item you would like to remove from the bookbag. The system will prompt you to confirm the removal.