How To Use LibraryThing.com

The St. John library collection is one of thousands of library collections hosted by LibraryThing.com. When you click on the link from this website a new window will open and you will be directed to the specific URL, or location, within the LibraryThing.com website containing the St. John library collection.

The URL of the starting point for our collection is http://www.librarything.com/catalog/stjohnlibrary
LibraryThing.com provides numerous hyperlinks to book and library information such that one could navigate away from the St. John library catalog. If this happens and you want to return to the collection, you have several options for returning:
Point your browser to the St. John Library home page and follow the links to the collection at LibraryThing.com. Point your browser to the specific URL within the LibraryThing.com website containing the St. John library catalog. If you are still in the LibraryThing.com website, click on the Search Tab, Enter stjohnlibrary in the Members input box, then press the Search button right next to that input box. You will be directed to the library’s profile page within the LibraryThing.com website, which provides a hyperlink to see catalog. Click on the see catalog hyperlink to return to the catalog listing.
The LibraryThing.com web application provides an interface for users to view and search the library catalog. Here is a screen shot of the interface followed by a description of the tools provided on this interface for viewing and searching books in the library collection:
	Navigation path – The navigation path shows your current location in the LibraryThing.com website which will usually be within the St. John Library catalog. As you view individual tags and books in the collection, the navigation path will change accordingly to show your present position. The path is represented by hyperlinked categorizations of the library contents separated by a > character. To navigate back up the list to a broader view of the catalog, simply click a hyperlink to move to the desired position.
	Display Views – The library catalog can be viewed in two different ways. The list view provides pages of rows and columns listing books in the library collection. The cover view provides pages of book covers which can be individually selected to display greater detail about the selected item. Click on the icon for List View or Cover View to achieve the desired view of the library catalog.
	In both List View and Cover View, images of the actual book cover as you would find on the library shelf are displayed. At the present time, not all book cover artwork has been imported into LibraryThing.com. The library committee will endeavor to provide book cover images for the entire library collection in the near future. For book covers whose images have not yet been imported into LibraryThing.com, a generic book cover imprinted with the book title is provided.
	Each row in the List View provides details about a single book from the library collection. The columns in this view correspond to fields, where each field contains a specific piece of information about a given book. The header of each column lists the field name and below that header is the corresponding information for each book.
	LibraryThing.com provides numerous fields of information that can be displayed for each book; more than can be conveniently displayed on a single web page. Therefore LibraryThing.com provides five display styles, labeled A, B, C, D and E, where each style provides several different fields of information about each book. Your library committee has also built a display style that contains what we feel are key columns of information for viewing and searching books from our library collection and then being able to find the desired books on the shelves in the church library. To select that style, click on the use it hyperlink.
	Column headers displayed in blue can be clicked to sort the books in alphabetical order by values in that column. A sorted column will display a down arrow icon next to the column header to indicate the listing is sorted by that particular column. By clicking again on that column header, or any column header with a down arrow icon, the books will be sorted in reverse alphabetical order by the values in the selected column. An up arrow will be displayed next to the column header to indicate that the listing is sorted in reverse alphabetical order by the values in that column.
	In the list view, items in the rows that are displayed in blue, are hyperlinks to more detailed information. Clicking on a book title will bring you to a web page describing details about the particular book.
	In large library collections, such as St. John’s, a listing of all the books would be too extensive to be shown on a single web page. Therefore a maximum of wenty books at a time (50 for the suggested use Display Style) can be shown on a single web page. When a book search resulting in an extensive list or a listing of the entire collection is desired, the books are listed 20 (or 50 for the suggested use Display Style)per page. Hyperlink controls are provided to skip to the next or previous page of book listings, or when the list is very long, a listing of hyperlinks to available pages is provided which can be selected and the list of books on the selected page will be shown.
The Tags and Author columns are the keys to finding books displayed in LibraryThing.com to an actual location in the church library. Our library classifies books into several sections as follows:
	NF – Non-fiction NF BI – Non-fiction Bible Study F – Fiction B – Biography YA – Young Adult Y – Youth J – Juvenile Ref - Reference
These codes are shown in the Tags column. Within each of these sections in the church library, books are sorted by the author’s last name. So once a desired book listing is found, you should look at the Tags column to see in what church library section the book is located then you should look at the information from the Author column to alphabetically find the book within that library classification section.
	The search boxes provide the ability to narrow down the list of displayed books. This is done by typing in the desired search criteria into the input box, selecting the search type from the pulldown list, then pressing the Search button.
	For example, if we want to find all books written by authors with the last name Johnson, we would type Johnson into the input box, select Titles and Authors from the pulldown list, then press the Search button. If we want to include the author's first name, then we would type the last name, follwed by a comma and a space, and then the first name, like Johnson, Barbara into the input box.
	Notice upon completing a search that the navigation path will adjust to reflect the current book listing based upon the entered search criteria. To retreat to a broader listing of the library catalog click the hyperlink corresponding to the desired categorization.
When inputting search criteria, matches will be generated when any input word matches the desired field. For example, entering God and using Titles and Authors will result in all books with the word God in the Title. From the pulldown list of search options, entries are provided for Most Fields and All Fields. Most Fields are the column headers in blue and All Fields searches the entire library database for word matches. If you want to limit your search to a specific field as indicated by a column header field name, enter that field name followed by a colon character, then a space, then the search criteria. For example entering isbn: 123456789x will search the isbn column for books with that specific isbn. Speaking of searching for ISBNs, do not attempt to search using the embedded hyphen characters characteristic of these numbers. Make sure you type in the isbn without the hyphens to achieve matching results.
Another search strategy is to use your favortie book site, such as Library of Congress, or Amazon.com to find a title in which you are interested. To determine if that title exists in our church library, use the LibraryThing.com search boxes to enter the isbn without hyphens, most or all fields from the pulldown, then press the search button. The search results will let you know if that particular title exists in our church library.
If you encounter difficulty using LibraryThing.com to browse our church library collection, take a look at some of the online help documentation provided by LibraryThing.com under the Help/FAQs hyperlink, or E-mail the church librarian .