Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Take a look at our NEW catalog!


Jan. 15th marks the unveiling of a new, more customer friendly, Gwinnett County Public Library website and catalog.  Polaris, as the catalog is called, has many enhanced features including:

Did you mean?  In the old catalog if you typed in “John Gresham” as a search, you would receive no results and no suggestions.  In Polaris the name “John Gresham” results in the response “Did you mean John Grisham?”
Autofill Options.  Like Google, Polaris can predict what you are trying to type. Say you are looking for the novel A Time to Kill. After typing in the first few letters of the title, Polaris will offer the full title as an autofill option. 
Reading History.  One of customers’ most requested features, Polaris has the ability to retain a user's reading history. However, each customer will need to activate this feature in the My Reading History section of the catalog. It can't give you a past history, but it will retain it from the time the feature is activated. 
Faceted Searching.   Like Amazon, Polaris offers customers the option to narrow search results through facets on the left side of the screen.  If your catalog search on penguins produces a long list of results, you can narrow it down based on format, author, publication date, and other factors.

Other cool features about the new Polaris library catalog include book suggestions based on your reading history, searches sent directly to your email so you will always know when the newest James Patterson arrives, a text it feature that lets you text a call number to yourself, and a Large Type button that enlarges the text and pictures on the library catalog. 

Enjoy your new GCPL searching experience!

To access the library catalog click the GCPL Logo or go to www.gwinnettpl.org.

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