Video and Transcript: Updated Bookshelf® Experience
Transcript:
Welcome to this quick tour of the new Bookshelf Home experience. We've redesigned our interface to enhance your learning journey, making it more intuitive and feature rich.
Accessing Bookshelf
Accessing Bookshelf remains simple. You can reach it directly at bookshelf.vitalsource.com or through your learning management system.
Upon arrival, students have the option to create an account or sign in using their Google or Apple accounts for added convenience.
Reimagined Home Page
Once logged in, you'll be greeted by our reimagined Home page.
Let's explore the key changes.
- Navigation has moved primarily to the left side.
- Here you’ll find home, search, and Explore if you have an Explore subscription.
- Under the My Shelves Section you’ll find My Library, Favorites, and Expired.
- At the bottom of the navigation pane, you’ll find “My Account,” “Help,” and “Feedback.”
- Clicking the Help button and then Support takes you to the VitalSource 24/7 Support site.
- Selecting feedback invites you to tell us what you think.
New Features
Recent Activity: New Features on the main page include a section for recently opened titles at the top of the home page located under “Recent Activity.”
Enhance Your Experience: In the middle of the page is the Enhance You Experience. In this section users can redeem a code, use the Explore option if they have an Explore subscription, go to favorites, visit the VitalSource store, or download the Bookshelf app.
Study Tools and Help Articles: Study Tools and Help articles are now listed on the main page as well.
Favorites Tab: One exciting addition is the Favorites tab. This allows you to organize your most-used books for easy access.
- To add a book to your favorites visit “My Library”
- Click the three dots next to the book title
- Select "Save to Favorites"
Your favorites will then appear in a special section for quick retrieval. To remove the book from favorites, simply repeat the process and select “remove from favorites.”
Expired: The “Expired” option is located under “My Shelves” in the left-hand column. This displays the users' expired or lost access titles. For example, if a student had a book with a three-month rental duration and that time had passed, the book would move to the expired tab. From here the student can decide if they want to purchase access or reach out to support.
Navigating Bookshelf
Search: Searching your digital library is easy. Use the magnifying glass to search for an author, title, or phrase. Search saves and displays recent searches as well as provide type-ahead suggestions.
Search results include both book titles and content within books! Check out the 'Contents' tab to view matches from within your books. The Content tab organizes results in order of recently opened, favorites and then all other content.
View All and My Library: Under recent activity, You can click “view all” to be taken to all of your books, or click on “My Library” located on the left under “My Shelves.”
My library shows you all the books you currently have access to.
You can also click on the book image to launch into the book or, click the three-dot menu for options to open the book, get the book details, or add it to favorites.
Book Details: Book details have been enhanced. You can now see more information, including details about the author, publisher, copyright year, format, ISBN or VBID, the URL to the book, and a description.
Features Within a Book
Now, let's take a quick look inside an eBook to highlight some key features. As always, users are still able to navigate using the scroll bar, page numbers, or table of contents to move through the book.
Search: Use the magnifying glass in the top right to search across content, notes, and highlights.
Flashcards, highlight, and add notes to text: Users can create flashcards as well as highlight text in different colors and add notes that can be shared with others.
Click on the icon of a paper with a star to manage highlights, notes, bookmarks and flashcards.
Reader Preference: Click the Reader Preference button, displayed as two letter As, to customize your reading experience. You can adjust font size, style, and color scheme. There’s even an "Open Dyslexic" font for improved accessibility.
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Read Aloud: Click on the thee dot menu in the top right to access Read Aloud. This feature allows you to listen to the text, with options to adjust speed and voice.
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New Beta Features: You can also opt-in to Beta features by clicking on the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner and selecting “Beta Features”. Currently, they include single- or double-page views, Emoji reactions, and looking up definitions! You can also opt-in to help improve VitalSource.
Remember, if you're accessing Bookshelf through your LMS, you might not see the Home page immediately. However, these features will still be available within your eBooks.
Additional Resources
We're excited about these updates and hope they enhance your learning experience. If you have any questions, remember that our Help section is always just a click away in the lower left corner.
To get more in-depth training on how to use Bookshelf, including sharing highlights with students, using citations, exporting notes, and adjusting the read-aloud functions, please watch our mini-Bookshelf training videos located on Support.vitalsource.com.