Exploring Libby

Scrolling the home screen gives a not quite unlimited smorgasbord of reading and listening. It is more random and eclectic than Exploring, discussed below, but this "wandering the stacks" kind of approach might be appealing for some readers. Love it or hate it, you should try it at least once. Just slide your finger up and down the screen and scroll your way to a great read!

Ready! Set!

Tap Explore to get started.

The first thing you will see is the following menu. Each of the selections will take you to a different way to see the collection.

Each Guide offers a curated selection of specialty titles. Not only will the browsing be filtered to the subject or audience, but there are also recommendations from librarians for readers who might be looking for something new from a favorite genre or maybe something completely different.

What's New?, What's Popular?, and What's Available? lead to what you would expect: the latest releases, the hottest titles, the something to read right now, respectively.

Skip The Line features titles with long holds that may occasionally appear here for lucky readers to snap up. Check back often!

Subjects lets you browse by your favorite genre or go window shopping for something new.

Searches stores a history of the things you have looked for before. Don't remember the title but you remember you were looking for "zombie apocalypse love story" (yep, that's a thing), you can re-find those hidden gems here.

Searching

If you know just what you are looking for, you go right to that spot on the shelves. You can do that in Libby, too!

At the top of the screen is a magnifying glass. Just tap that and you can search for authors, titles, genres... almost anything!

Once on the results page, you can then Refine your results to find precisely what you want. Some of these options are the same as those in the Preferences section, so you may already have somewhat refined your results before you even arrived!

As an example, let's search for a good dinosaur book.

First, we tap the magnifying glass and enter our terms.

Tap the the search button on the keyboard and see the results page. Here we have 31 books.

Note there are preferences set, indicated by the number 5 next to the word Preferences. No audiobooks will be shown in the results.

Hmm, let's narrow this down. By tapping more at the top of the screen, we can refine things further, such as by subject. This menu can scroll up and down, as shown.

If the goal is a good book about modern paleontology, the appropriate subject is "Science".

With "Science" selected (indicated by the small x next to it) that narrows our search quite a bit.

Wow, only 2 books? That's not very many! I wonder why so few? Oh, wait! Preferences!

Because I have "Available Now" selected, anything that might have to be put on hold is not shown!

By selecting "Everything" under Availability, now we can see 8 books. Well, that's an improvement!

However, there are still a lot of kid's books in this list, and we are looking for something at a more advanced reading level.

How can we find that perfect book?

Going back to the Refine menu to the right, we select Audience and then select General Content.

Now there are only 3 books (no audiobooks) listed!

The first title listed here is one of the most popular scientific books about dinosaurs at the time of this writing. It appears in the top 10 of Amazon's "Best Sellers in Biology of Dinosaurs" an astounding three times, once each as an audiobook, an e-book, and a hardcover!

That's a successful search!

More information is available about books in the collection. If you tap the little + across from the title, you can see how many copies of that book are in the collection, and how many are currently available. You can also select Borrow here to proceed.

If a book has a waiting list, this will be shown in the same place, replacing the little + with a calendar icon. Tap the calendar to see the current holds and the approximate time until it will be available.

You can tap Place Hold to get in line.

Great, I found a book! Now what..?

Now, it's time to Check Out!

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