Introduced August, 2008.

The Book Browser is a new way to find books to request!  It is accessible from the dropdown menu under Search at the top of the site.

How to use it:

• You can check off what you are interested in on the left of the Book Browser page
  • you have Types, Terms, Filters and Sorts to specify--use any combination of these, or leave any of these blank--see below
• The results will come up on the right of the page after you click Update Results

What's new about it:

• The layout is more user-friendly than the Advanced Search: the search and the books are right on the same page so you can refine your browsing with minimal clicking and no going "back"
• There is now a way to select only highly-rated (4 and 5 star rated) books that match your other search criteria and show those first in the search results.
• You can change your choices on the left, click Update Results, and have the search results "refresh" on the right side of the page.

The "types", "terms", "filters" and "sorts" on the Browser

• Types: This means the database you want to browse, Posted or UnPosted or Wished-for or All books.  Choosing (for example) All Books here says "Show me All books (whether currently available or unavailable) that match the search terms below".  The default will be Posted (available) books when you first go to the Browser.  You can change this choice and leave the rest of your search terms below intact, and the search results will change accordingly on the right of the page.

• Terms are search terms.  Meaning, text you type in to tell the browser to "show me books that have this term associated with them".
  • The terms are: Keyword (this word can appear in any part of the book information, including the description; ISBN if you have it should be put into the Keyword field), Title, author, genre (and subgenre if you want)

• Filters are limiting aspects.  Meaning, "Show me only Large Print books" or "Show me only Large Print and audio books" or "Show me only books whose titles begin with the letter P." " or "Show me only books published after 2004". If you choose all of these filters when you browse, you would be asking "Show me only Large Print or Audio books with titles beginning with the letter P that were published after 2004."
  • The filters are: Binding type/format (paperback, hardcover, Audio Cassette, Audio CD, Large Print), Publication date (you can choose an exact date or a "before this year" or "after this year" or "NOT this year"),  Recently Posted (use this to show recently-added books that match these search terms), and Title (you can confine all search results to one letter of the alphabet so that only books whose titles begin with that letter will be shown).
• Sorts determine how the search results are displayed on the right side of the page.  The sort defaults to  "descending"  but you can select ascending also.  Example: "sort by relevance -descending" means "Show me the items that most closely match my choices for this search at the top of the page so I see them first".
  • Sorts are: relevance, title (alphabetically), author (alphabetically), Rating (star-rating average), date posted (into the club), publication date.

You can choose any combination of the above to browse books quickly and find books that you want to request!  Your choices will "stick" unless/until you change them, or you can click Clear at the top left of the page to clear all fields and make all-new choices.

You can save any search by naming it at the bottom left of the Book Browser. That means you can run a particular browsing session again at any time, without having to make all the choices again. You can get to your Saved Searches from the dropdown menu under Search at the top of the site.