Navigating the CGS Online Library site (LibraryThing)
I. Access. The easiest way to access this catalog is through the CGS Library website. Go to our CGS website http://www.cgslutheranchurch.org/ and on the left-hand side of the home page, click on "CGS Library."
From the Library home page, click on the "CGS Online Library" link.
To access this
site directly, go to http://www.librarything.com/home/CGSLibrary
II. Profile Page. You will be taken to the CGSLibrary “Profile” page on LibraryThing. (Yes, our official name on this site is CGSLibrary and not CGS Library with a space between the words). The Profile Page is designed to tell the user a little bit about us and our collection. To see the actual catalog of our books and other materials, go to "Books 1,195 books cataloged" found towards the top of the page right under "Member: CGSLibrary" and click on the highlighted "1,195 books cataloged." The number will increase as we add titles to the catalog, but the process remains the same. If for some reason you prefer, you can also click on http://www.librarything.com/catalog/CGSLibrary (library) found further down the page under URLs.
Other items of possible interest may be found towards the bottom of the Profile page. Click on “Awards” to see what awards have been given to titles in our collection. For example, see which of our children’s books have been awarded the Newberry Prize. You can also search our holdings for series to which they belong, characters found in them and places (real and imaginary) described.
III. Online catalog arrangement.
Please note that the arrangement you see (at least the first time you go there) will be the default arrangement from LibraryThing. Books are arranged in alphabetical order by title and the call number is not displayed. To see a more useful arrangement, go to the top of the page and look for "CGSLibrary has a suggested style for viewing this library (use it)" Click on the "(use it)."
The page should now display call numbers and be arranged in Dewey Decimal order. It will also display subject headings. (Where subject headings are lacking, we have tried to add their equivalent (Library of Congress subject headings) under “Tags”).
To re-arrange the material by call number (if it is not already so ordered) or by author, title, “publication”(not very useful), date of publication or Tags, click on the corresponding heading (e.g. author, title, etc.) and the list will be re-ordered along those lines. You can choose date order (oldest to newest or newest to oldest) by clicking on “Date” and then on the little triangle next to the “Date.” Clicking on “Tags” will order them alphabetically (A-Z or Z-A by clicking on the little triangle next to Tags) – although many, perhaps most, titles do not have any tags.
IV. Online catalog navigation.
Call numbers. We are using the Dewey classification found in
most public libraries with which most people are familiar. If you are some kind of Dewey expert, please
note that we have made some changes to accommodate our particular collection,
in particular with regard to our materials on the
When in call number order, you will see the following arrangement:
Regular adult non-fiction comes first.
Adult non-fiction is followed by works meant for “children”. That could mean something written for pre-school children or for teenagers as well as some titles we would consider “literature” such as Robinson Crusoe or even Little House on the Prairie. Someday we may revisit this melding of different age groups, but until that time, please note that the call numbers for “juvenile literature” always are preceded by a “J”
(e.g. J 265)
Books in “Large Print” come next. Their call numbers are preceded by an “L”
(e.g. L 678)
Adult fiction is last. Fiction “call numbers” consist of “[Fic]” followed by the first four letters of the author’s last name. (e.g. a book by Mark Twain will be “[Fic] Twai”) In some cases where we have several titles by the same author, the four letters of the author’s last name will be followed by the first two letters of the title (e.g. Erma Bombeck’s Aunt Erma’s cope book would be “[Fic] Bomb Au”)
Authors. Clicking on the name of a specific author will display a list of other titles he or she has written and other general information on that person.
Title. Clicking on a specific title will provide more information about that book such as which other LibraryThing members have it, reviews by members of LibraryThing as well as suggestions for similar books.
Subject. Clicking on a specific subject will usually provide a list of other titles on the same subject (in and outside of our collection).
Tags. Clicking on “Tags” will show any other books in our collection that have the same tag – but only those that did not have anything in the subject field. . As indicated above, we are using Library of Congress subject headings (LCSH) here in “Tags” if for no other reason than for consistency (the headings in “Subjects” are LCSH). There are some caveats about this, however. Many LCSH use a comma in them such as “Bible stories, English,” but we have to delete the comma in such a heading because in LibraryThing a comma can only be used to separate one “tag” from another, and if we left the subject heading above as is, we would in effect be making two “tags.” So the tag ends up as “Bible stories English.”
Also, you many find some subject headings or tags that seem odd. For example, you will see “Bible. N.T.” Although it may be obvious, it is shorthand for “Bible. New Testament,” just as “Bible. O.T.” is shorthand for “Bible. Old Testament.”
Symbols. On the far right column, you will notice five symbols.
The “open book” or the “+” symbols are not useful. The symbol that looks like an index card will provide some additional bibliographic information such as a book’s ISBN.
The number next to the “person” symbol indicates how many other LibraryThing collections also have that title. The number next to what looks like a balloon indicates how many comments / reviews people have made about the book.