Frequently Asked Questions

If you write a review, make a comment, tag or other type of content, use the My Shelves feature, rate something, or create lists within BiblioCommons, that information is retained on BiblioCommons’ servers. You can choose to make your My Lists and My Shelves private. 

If you plan to add ratings or comments to things you’ve borrowed, you should make them shared. Otherwise, no one else will be able to see what you’ve contributed! Regardless of your default shelf setting, you can make individual items private or shared. 

The ability to see ratings, comments, similar titles, lists of suggested titles, and more is one of the great benefits of BiblioCommons. With this community-created content, you can see what fellow patrons of Stark Library and other BiblioCommons libraries in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have said about an item.

Furthermore, you can share your own expertise with your fellow patrons and the library community, making lists on topics you are passionate about, helping other patrons find similar books they might enjoy through matching titles you have read, or giving patrons insight into a title you loved—or didn’t love—and why. The information you add to items in the catalog makes it easier for other members to discover new titles, and helps them determine if these items are of interest.

In the United States, minors cannot enter free text. This means:

• Minors also do not have the option of displaying their real names. An anonymous username must be created by choosing from a pair of dropdowns lists. 
• Minors cannot add comments, summaries or tags.

 BiblioCommons accesses some of the personal information you have already provided your library, including:

• Your name
• Your Stark Library barcode,= and PIN/password

In addition, if you have provided these to Stark Library, they will be provided to BiblioCommons during the creation of your account:

• The month and year of your birth (which is required for compliance with US federal law [COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act])
• Your email address

Although you have shared your address and phone number, among other personal information, with your Stark Library, BiblioCommons does not have access to that information.

Age information is used to protect minors, as required by COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. In the United States, children under 13 are not allowed to enter free text.

If your birth year and month is not part of your library patron record, you will be asked for it during registration. Providing it is optional. You can still register and create an account without birth information. However, certain features, such as the ability to add comments or summaries, will be restricted. BiblioCommons treats all patrons without birth information as if they were minors.

Library Staff with access to a Library Admin permissions-level card in BiblioCommons can unregister a patron account at the patron's request. Unregistering a patron's BiblioCommons account will purge all patron information, including User Generated Content contributions, from the BiblioCommons servers.

Sensitive Personal Information (SPI), including name, date of birth, library barcode, and PIN, is stored permanently, so long as the patron remains registered for their BiblioCommons account. If the patron chooses to have their account unregistered, all SPI associated with that account will be deleted from the servers.

If you haven’t set up a PIN, your PIN will usually be set to the last four digits of the phone number that is registered for your account. 

You can login with your username or your library card number – that’s up to you. The reason we require all users to select a unique username is because the new catalog has additional optional functionality, like commenting on books and keeping track of your reading on shelves. And to support this, we need all users to have a username.  

You can choose to track your reading history, now called “borrowing history,”  in the new catalog, and this history is only visible to you, not to staff or other patrons.

Under My Account, choose My Settings

Scroll down to Account Preferences/Borrowing History

Click Change if you would like to turn on your borrowing history

Click the slider button to move your setting to enabled

Click Save Changes

Note: Your borrowing history is disabled until you activate it

If you had “Reading History” enabled in our previous catalog, your history will be imported to the new catalog.

Your Borrowing History will be listed in My Library Dashboard, under My Borrowing.

You may be able to use your Alternate I.D. if it is not already in use by someone as a Username.  Try the following:

• When you register, enter your Alternate I.D. instead of your barcode on the registration page.
• If your account information appears, your Alternate I.D. is available to use as your new Username.
• If your account information does not appear, your Alternate I.D. is not available to use as a Username. You will need to enter your Library barcode instead and choose a new Username.

Yes. The only information that's shared with others is information you choose to share

If you chose to add titles to your virtual shelves or lists or share ratings and you allow those activities to be public, then other patrons will see your contributions, but you can also make all your personal record keeping completely private. We are in an era of sharing and social media, and if you do want to participate, there are many different options in place for patrons who want to participate but also want to keep certain personal record keeping private: 

• You can select an anonymous username 
• You can change the privacy settings for your shelves
• You can make select items private as you add titles or comments 

Even if you opt into track what you've borrowed on your Recently Returned page, no one else sees that data, and you can opt out if you wish. 

Click on your username and then click on “Checked Out.” Select the items you want to renew.

In the United States, children under 13 are not allowed to enter free-text on websites without parental approval (per COPPA: the Child Online Privacy Protection Act). Currently, we do not have an option to ensure parental approval, so we came up with the color/animal/number format for usernames, but we hope to provide other options in the future. Once a child turns 13, he or she will be able to select a username and have other free-text options available. 

First, try the last four digits of your phone number. If you are uncertain of that number, please call any library location and provide your Library card barcode number. Library staff will reset your PIN. Once you’ve completed your new registration, you can change your PIN in My Account > My Settings.

BiblioCommons will not sell, rent or trade your personal information (for example, your email address, date of birth or library barcode). Your personal information is protected by applicable local, state, or laws pertaining to library records, and the BiblioCommons Privacy Statement and BiblioCommons Terms of Use. Information in your BiblioCommons account that personally identifies you is encrypted and stored in a secured facility.

By agreeing to the Terms of Use, you are granting Stark Library and BiblioCommons the right to make use of that material, including copying, distributing and displaying it, as long as it is attributed. You retain ownership.

This type of arrangement, which is known as an Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Creative Commons License, is widely used on sites where visitors share information. For example, see the Reviews, Comments, Communications, and Other Content section in Amazon’s Terms of Use.

Such a license allows BiblioCommons or the library to, for example, tweet a book review you’ve written or post a link to it on a website without requiring your permission.

Adding comments, summaries, ratings and lists is an optional feature. As noted in the Terms of Use, if you don’t wish to give Stark Library and BiblioCommons the rights, don’t contribute comments, lists or summaries.