Oliver v5 guided tour - for students

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Read the transcript
 

Welcome to the guided tour of Oliver. We hope this will give you all the important bits of information you need to help get you started.

Logging on

Your librarian, learning resource manager or teacher will give you your login details for Oliver. If you’re unsure what they are, they’ll be happy to help.

You can access Oliver without a login if you like. But logging in will give you more useful features like recommendations just for you.

You’ll also be able to see what loans you have and save your searches and favourite books.

Basic search

One of the main uses for Oliver is to see what resources your library and school have for you to use.

The main search box is here.

You can choose to narrow down your search with one of these categories. Using these filters will help you to be more accurate in your search.

After you’ve searched, there are a few things you could use to help you further:

To the left you’ll see other filter options, for example, you can see in collections we have senior fiction and nonfiction.

Notice these icons? These relate to genres. You might like adventure novels, so click through and see what else you might find!

If you have any trouble finding what you’re looking for, make sure you ask your librarian for help.

Advanced search

This search can be used when you want to be very specific about what you are looking for.

For example, you may want a book, about biology, published after 2017, and in the senior section.

Genres

If you just want to browse around rather than search for something specific, the Genre tab is a great feature.

Here you can browse through a whole range of different genres to see if you can find something you like.

Perhaps you’re into Manga. With the Genre tab, you can browse everything your library has very quickly.

Reading lists

You could also have a look at the Reading Lists tab. This works in a very similar way to the Genres tab, but these are collections of resources that have been put together by your librarian or teacher.

They may want to show you a selection of great books that have won awards, or they may have put together a selection of books that would be great to help with your homework.

Adding items to basket & sharing/emailing

While you’re searching, you can click to add items to your Basket.

This way you can easily reserve multiple items at once, or save items you find interesting while you’re still searching.

If you change your mind, you can remove these from your basket before you make your reservation.

The best thing is, if you find books you love and want to share with your friends, you can very quickly send them the information, or even send it home to yourself to take a look at another time.

Book reviews

Everywhere you go on the internet people are rating things, you can do the same for the books in your library.

Once you’ve finished with the book or video simply rate it out of 5 and add a comment.

You can also use the star ratings and reviews to help choose books. Reading feedback from students like you makes finding books in Oliver even easier!

News pages

The News page is the heart of your library system. Here you’ll get updates on new reading competitions, and even events in the library and school.

If your school has LearnPath, which has useful resources for your lessons and homework, you can also access that here.

Hopefully this video has given you some helpful tips on using Oliver. Remember, if you have any questions, your librarian, learning resource manager or teacher will be able to help.

Happy searching!