Improved profile

We are trying to improve our profile design with more rounded edges. Our goal is to make the profile page simpler, better looking and relevant. The designs are not yet final and we will be iterating through couple of them in the next few days. Any design ideas or feedback is greatly appreciated.

Dewey Decimal Classification

On certain non-fictional books, GuruLib now provides Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) codes. We are exploring the feature of browsing your catalog using the Dewey codes but kind of short of good ideas. Any librarians willing to help us will be greatly appreciated. You can see the DDC codes in your book information page right below the book cover.

Permalink and Excel export for every shelf

 

At the bottom right corner of GuruLib page is a permalink (permanent link) that you could use to instantly navigate to a particular section of your catalog. Permalink is particularly useful if you have a very large collection.

Based on the feedback that we received from several users, we added the export to Excel feature for your shelves. You need to be in “Detail View” to use this feature. In the detail view next the “Print” button on the same level as the “search” box you will find a logo of “Excel”. Clicking on that logo will generate an Excel sheet containing your selected shelf/media catalog. The columns on the shelf are also configurable. That is the columns on the excel sheet directly corresponds to the columns that you have configured for your “Detail View”.(Detail view columns can be configured by first logging into your GuruLib account and then select the detail view option and then right click on the column headers to insert/remove/edit columns).

 

GuruLib Cover Flow Screen Saver

Last week, I thought of adding some fun tools for your Home Library. I came with the idea of a screen saver that shows a cover flow of books, music, movies in your GuruLib library. The screen shot that you are seeing above is from the screen saver that I created for GuruLib. 

Steps to Install the Screen Saver

1. Click on this link –> Download GuruLib screen saver Installer
2. Click “Run”. (Windows will show a message that the publisher is not verified blah. .blah ignore that and click “Run” again)
3. Finish the setup 
4. The “Display Properties” window shown below opens up 

   

5. Select the screen saver tab and then click on the “Settings” button. GuruLib Screen Saver window shown below opens up

   

6. Set your GuruLib username and press OK
7. Click on the “Preview” button on the “Display properties” window
8. Press “Apply” and “Ok”

Note: This screen saver was only tested on Windows Platform. Sorry Linux and Mac users, I don’t have the knowledge to write screen savers in those platforms, if anybody would like to help me with porting the screen saver code to linux or mac please send me an email at ranabasheer[at]hotmail[dot]com. I will be happy to send the code. The code is written in C#.

If for some reason the screen saver throws an error or just did nothing, the most likely reason is that you don’t have the latest .NET framework from microsoft. You may download the .NET framework from microsoft here.]

Check out the YouTube video of this Screen Saver

Minor Improvements

1. Now you can delete an entire shelf. You need to login to your GuruLib account. In the main library view select the shelf that you want to delete. You will have two options presented  
   • Edit the shelf
   • Delete the shelf and move all its contents to the trash can shelf
2. We have added more theme colors to play with. Check them out on your settings page
3. On your profile page you can sort libraries that are similar to your library based on Similarity(No. of titles that are common), Distance (how far the other library is from you) and username
4. Profile page now includes the genre cloud to give an idea about the library’s content