Distance Learners

My Library Account on MERLIN

Introduction: This video shows you the features of the My Library account on the MERLIN catalog. From the search page of the MERLIN library, the My Library Account link is on the right-hand side. If you enter your username, you will be passed through.

My Library: Underneath personal information is the items in my library. Any books you request from MERLIN or MOBIUS library will be listed under the red flag. Books you currently have checked out will be listed. Any searches you have saved. Books that have been checked out and returned to the library will be in your reading history if you turn it on. And finally, if you’ve located books that you would like to read and put them in My List these will also be listed.

Checked Out: You will probably be using the Checked Out most often, let’s look at that. The Checked Out Items show the title of the book, barcode number (library stuff you can ignore), the due date, and the call number. One of my books is overdue, and I’d like to renew it. I’ll select renew, I’ll click renew marked button, I’ll say yes, and it will tell me it has been renewed one time. I can renew the book twice online and then I have to bring it back the library. If I wanted to, I could renew all the books at one time, but that wouldn’t give me the longest possible time for checkout, so I prefer to renew them one-at-a-time.

Reading History: Another useful feature of My Library is reading history. Reading history is exactly that. It’s a history of all the books you have checked out of the library. You have to opt-in to turn it on, or it doesn’t exist. This is very useful if you do a lot of research in the library. Often times you’ll check out a book and forget what it is after you’ve returned it. This will give you a history, too, so you can find the title and locate the book.

Preferred Searches and Lists: Another feature of My Library is Preferred Searches. You can run searches in the catalog, and save them so you can run them again later on. Similar to a preferred search is My Lists. These are lists of books you have created that you want to come back to later on. Making preferred searches or lists is not difficult. Let’s go back to the main search screen. I’ll do a keyword search on Plato. If I wanted to save this search, I’d click this button. If I wanted to save this to a folder or list, all I’d have to do is click this icon, select view folder, select add to my lists, select create a new list, create a new list, and submit. Now let’s see if it really worked. I’ll go back to my account. I’ll look first at preferred searches. There’s my search for plato and MU. Under my list there are the three I’ve saved for Plato. And there are the books’ titles and when I added them. If I wanted to get the call number, I would click the title of the book and it would take me back.

Conclusion: As you’ve seen, the library account has a number of useful features. If you use it in the library, be sure to logoff and close the browser. We wouldn’t want anybody getting into your library account. Thanks for watching, and if you need any help, come to the reference desk at Ellis Library.