There are several new and enhanced functions available in our new-look catalogue which will help you to manage your searching and requesting.

Saving and managing records in My favourites

You can save records for later access in the catalogue by clicking the Pin icon that appears next to each item in the search results:

Pin an item to save to My favourites

To access the list of items you’ve saved, click the Pin icon in the menu bar at the top of the page and you’ll be taken to the My favourites page.

Select the Pin icon in the menu bar to access the My favourites page
Select the Pin icon in the menu bar to access the My favourites page

Items saved as a guest will be kept for the duration of the session, but if you log in to the catalogue, pinned items will be saved with your account so you can access them again next time you log in.

Saving items in your account also gives you the option to add labels to the items on the My favourites page so you can easily manage your saved items. Simply click the ADD LABELS button (1) for any item and type in a new label or select one of the labels you’ve previously used. You can also select several items (2) and add labels to all of them at once by clicking the pencil icon at the top of the page (3).

Labelling multiple items on the My favourites page
Add labels to multiple items by first selecting one or more items, then clicking the pencil icon.

You can then easily find items you’ve saved by choosing from the list of labels to the right of the My favourites page. You can also sort your list of saved items by the title or author of the work, or by the date added to the list.

Saving searches and setting alerts

When logged in to the catalogue with your State Library membership details, any time you perform a search you’ll see the Save search / Set an alert button appear at the top of the results. Click this button to save the search to your account to run the same search again.

Save search / Set an alert button

When you save a search, the confirmation message that appears at the top of the screen includes a link to turn on email notifications for the search. Click this link and enter your email address and we’ll send you an email alert once a week with a list of the new items added to the catalogue that match your search.

Search history

All the catalogue searches you perform in a session are temporarily saved in the the Search history which can be accessed by clicking the clock icon in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Select the Clock icon in the menu bar to access the Search history page
Select the Clock icon in the menu bar to access the Search history page

On the Search history page, you can re-run any of your previous searches by simply clicking the search terms, or check the Pin icon to the right of a search listing to save the search.

From this section of the catalogue, you can also access the list of your saved searches, where you can manage your email notifications, remove saved searches and set up RSS feeds.


To access the features discussed in this post, you can sign up for membership online. Victorian members can also have free access from home to the Library’s eresources, including ebooks, enewspapers, ejournals and streaming services.


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