At the beginning of the year, I set a goal for myself to read at least one book each month. My memory for that kind of tracking is pretty terrible, so I also had to decide how I’d keep track of what I read.
Despite having three million beautiful and useful journals, my consistency for writing things in them leaves a lot to be desired, so I decided to use digital tracking for my reading. There are a whole host of apps and methods to choose from including some tools from the Library.
When you log into your account on our catalog (pryor.biblionix.com/catalog) using your library card number and last name, you can “opt in” to keeping a history of your checkouts. This is handy if, like me, you forget everything you’ve ever read when you decide to look for something new. Our system default is not to keep your history (this protects your privacy), so if you want your history, select “opt in” or give us a call and we can select it for you on our end.
The Libby app will keep your digital reading history under the “Timeline” menu (look for the clock icon). The default here is to keep the history, but you can choose not to by selecting “Actions” at the top of the Timeline page.
Neither of these tracking methods will tell you whether you finished the book or if you liked it. You can leave reviews in our catalog of the materials you read from the Library, but as of now, there’s not a way to look back at all of the books you’ve reviewed. For that level of tracking, you’ll need a third party app or a journal. The most popular reading app is Goodreads, but I prefer Storygraph for my own tracking.
As always if you need help with any of this (or anything else), give us a call or come in. We’ll walk you through it step-by-step until you’re comfortable with it and confident to use it solo.