Your Ohio Digital Library Account

I’ve been borrowing e-books from the library for as long as the library has offered them. And through every upgrade and change, I’ve done my best to stay on top of the process of finding, borrowing, downloading, and reading the library’s e-books. But for some reason, I never paid much attention to my Account with the Ohio Digital Library aside from the Bookshelf showing what I have checked out, and the Holds section to see what’s happening with items I’ve requested. But last week I found myself poking around the other two sections of my Account—Lists and Settings—and I found two things I’d never seen before. On the off chance that others haven’t looked through their Account either, I thought I’d share my discoveries.

Lists

Now, I’d been in Lists before, and I knew that this is where ODL saved my Wish List items so I could find them later. But then I opened up the pull-down menu and saw that one of the options is Recommended for you. ODL didn’t do too bad recommending titles for me based on what I’ve checked out, although I already knew that I would like Jo Nesbo’s Headhunters since I checked it out and read it from ODL. Perhaps the algorithm will improve and the recommendations will get better, but for now, it’s an interesting feature, and I will at least consider the titles on the list.

 

 

Settings

Like Lists, I know I’ve been in Settings before, because this is where you can change your default Lending periods. For each format, select a short, medium, or long period (7, 14, or 21 days for e-books). This can be great of people who check out the allotted 10 items at a time, read them quickly, and then want more. In that case, 21 days would be an awfully long time. But for busy people who don’t have as much time to read as they would like, having 21 days to finish a title is wonderful. But if you scroll down farther, there is a High contrast setting. Switching to High from Standard, the background is black and the text and icons are in vibrant colors. This is a sort of “night” view that I know can be handy when looking at a screen in a dark room. I’m not sure many people would want to make this switch, but it’s nice to know the option exists. (Oh, and be sure to Save your changes before leaving the Settings page.)

 

 

Shelia