Your Library Account

Your account, located in the library catalog, offers selfservice and personalization functions for searching and saving records, managing borrowed items, and placing requests for services.

Your Account FAQ

Places to Log In
Review Account Status
Renew Items
Place Holds
Other Types of Requests
Set Search Preferences
Bookbag
Save/Re-execute Searches

Your Account

Your account, located in the library catalog, offers self-service and personalization functions for searching and saving records, managing borrowed items, and placing requests for services.

You will be prompted to log in from several tool bar options in the catalog: “Patron,” “Request,” “Bookbag,” “Preferences,” “Saved Searches,” or “Login.”

If you choose to Login at the beginning of your research, you can use the toolbar to move to other account functions without being prompted to retype your username and password.

Places to Log In

From the Quick Start box on the library’s home page
From within the library catalog search pages
From links on the library’s Searchable Collections and Borrowing & Ordering pages

Non-current and non-WPI users must type in their last name and the barcode number found on the back of their borrower’s card. Current WPI students, staff, and faculty may use their network username and password instead, by choosing the button at the bottom of the login screen. NOTE: Sessions time out after 10 minutes of inactivity.

Click “Patron” on the toolbar. You will see a list of items you have checked out, fines you owe, blocks on your account, items for which you have placed holds, and the status of your Interlibrary Loan requests.

Renew Items

On the Patron screen, under “Charged Items,” click the check boxes for the items you want to renew.
Click “Renew Items.”

Most items may be renewed up to three times. An exception to this is for faculty who have different loan periods. For more information, please read our policies.

Be sure to check the result screen to see if items were renewed. Some items, such as those that have had a hold placed on them, may not be renewable. Interlibrary Loan items may be renewed only through requests to the Interlibrary Loan staff: request online or contact lib-ill@wpi.edu.

Place Holds

Holds permit you to request that a charged item be reserved for your use when it is returned. Once a hold is placed, the person who has the item charged out will not be able to renew it, and you will be notified by e-mail when it is available at the library.

Once you identify an item in the catalog you would like held, display the record for it, then select “Request” from the toolbar.

If prompted, log in to your account.
Choose “Hold Request” from the pull-down list and click OK.
Return to the Patron screen to see that your hold was properly executed. It will appear under Requests Pending.

Other Types of Requests

Your account provides request forms for several library services. With the exception of Interlibrary Loan Request forms (which are always visible once you have logged in), other request forms are only visible if you choose “Request” while displaying the catalog record for the specific item involved. The following request forms may be available to you, depending on your borrowing status.

For these requests you must be viewing a specific item’s record in the catalog:

Hold Request—to place a hold on an item that is checked out so that you are next in line to borrow it
Project Report Request—to request retrieval of projects (IQPs, MQPs) for you to use within the library
Founders Storage—to request retrieval from storage (often available the same day)
eAudio Request—to request an audiobook be downloaded to one of our MP3 players and made available for you to check out
Faculty Course Reserve Request—only faculty will see this option in their list of request forms

These requests (always visible) do not require you to view a specific item’s catalog record:

Interlibrary Loan Book/Video Request
Interlibrary Loan Journal Article/Conference Paper Request
Suggest a Purchase

Set Search Preferences

Click "Preferences."
Choose Basic, Advanced, or Reserves as your default search.
For Basic, choose the default search field. (Title is the automatic default; alternatives are Author, Journal Title, Subject Heading, among others.)
For Reserves, you may set instructor, department, course, etc.
Be sure to click "Save" at the bottom of the screen.
Click "Search" to utilize your choice.

Bookbag

Bookbag allows you to create a collection of items and save the listing for future use.

Select the checkboxes for items you want to save in Bookbag.
Click “Save To Bookbag” in the Save Options box at bottom.

Once your collection is created, you can print or e-mail the records in a variety of formats, delete selected items as needed, or clear the entire collection and start over. You may access Bookbag within your account by selecting Bookbag from the toolbar.

RefWorks users may save the record(s) in RefWorks format, then import into RefWorks using Import, Import Filter/Data Source: Endeavor Voyager, Database: Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Saving and Re-executing Searches

While viewing a search result, you may select “Save This Search” in the box at the bottom of the screen.
To view a list of saved searches, click the option within the toolbar, or click the red Saved Searches button on the Patron screen.
Click on any search to re-execute it.
Mark the checkbox beside searches you want to delete from the list.

Maintained by lib-webmaster@wpi.edu
Last modified: Feb 26, 2007, 13:21 EST