What's New: Bookshelf Online

VitalSource is excited to announce improvements to Bookshelf Online's Library.  These changes will help to organize your content better and reduce overall distractions.  As a platform dedicated to student-centric learning, we strive to continually improve Bookshelf to assist students in their comprehension of course materials. 

 

What’s New?

Continue Reading

For ease of use, we have the most recent title now more prominently displayed. Previously, this would have been the first book in your bookshelf, but it wasn’t explicitly called out. We added this feature to help our users easily jump back into their reading without any distractions. We provide more information below on the info and search icons next to the book.

Your book card has a lot more information than you’d think

We have been adding more and more information to the book card over the years, and as a result, we ran out of space on the card.

Now, we have a new book hover that allows you to find out more information about your title quickly. 

• Click the “i” icon to find out book details including ISBN, citation information, and badges for notes, highlights, and flashcards.
• Click the search icon to do a content search within the title.
• Click the attachment icon (when applicable) to receive your eResources. Note: this continues to be online only.

Courseware purchases now have custom book cards so you can quickly grab your access code. We moved the access code redemption process from a modal window to a panel; the steps have not changed.

Swimlanes of Content

Placing all books into a swimlane helps declutter the library allowing for the most recent books to be prominently featured while putting those older unused titles easily out of sight, but always available. To see some of your older titles, use the arrows, scrubber bar, or (on mobile) your finger to quickly page through. Can’t find it? Bookshelf's search will help you locate titles quickly and easily. 

Sorting and Filtering Simplified

Previously, your library had numerous filters in various places causing clutter and confusion. We condensed these for ease of use.

Search & Filter bar

We removed the filter bar and combined it with the library search. The new search bar has a type-ahead feature to help when performing title and author searches. For content search click, View All Results, or hit Enter on your keyboard, and you will have results with both title and content results for ease of use.

Drill into any content result card and see content results in a panel. From the panel, the functionality has not changed. Clicking on the corresponding sentence will navigate you into that section of the book.

Filter settings and Collections

For those with a lot of books in their account, having to use two different menus to filter items properly was a challenge.  So, we’ve updated and moved these features into your My Books screen.

Click on My Books at the top of your swimlane

You will now have filters at the top of your screen that you can click on, as well as a grid view of all your books.

Should you prefer to scroll through in a grid view over the new swimlane design, you can easily do that here.

Collections are now prominently featured in a swimlane across the top with additional filters of Assignments, Resources, and Courseware available.

Assignments are easier to find!

Assignments were previously part of the book card as a badge, which was easy to miss. Now, we call these out prominently with a dedicated swimlane.

See the books and readings assigned to you. You can click on the assignments badge on a title to see all the assigned readings for that specific title. Clicking the assignments badge will open a panel with relevant information. Click play to start an assignment.

Or you can go to All assignments by clicking the ‘All Assignments’ card and see the readings available for all assigned content. Click the play button to get started.

Our header looks a little different

While there is no functionality change, you may notice that the header and some of the drop downs appear a little different. Nothing has been removed or added in this instance.

 

Reading Time

You work hard. See how much time you have spent in Bookshelf and how many titles you have opened in the last month.

 

New Onboarding Cards

Click the ‘Explore your new library’ card to see helpful onboarding messaging.