My Lists

My Lists: FAQ and Guide

What are "lists"?

Lists are collections of titles from the CW MARS catalog that you can create. Lists can be kept private or shared, (more on sharing lists can be found further down on this page). 

Lists can be used for a variety of reasons. Want to keep track of titles you've read regardless of how you read them? Add them to a list and make notes on the ones you've read. Want to maintain a holiday themed group of titles to share with your co-workers? Create a list and share it.

The Help guide on this page covers how to set up and maintain your lists.

The "My Lists" page

After you log into your account, click My Lists in the top right or from the left pane of options on the My Account Summary page.

At the top of the page, you'll see a button to Create New List. Underneath that will be your Saved Lists if any have been created.

Creating/Editing a list

From the My Lists page in your account, you can create a new list by following these steps:

You will now see your new list under Saved Lists.

In the example here, I have created a list called "I <3 the 80s".

Note how I <3 the 80s is hyperlinked. If you click on the list name, you will see an expanded view. 

At the moment there are no titles in this list.


To Edit a list title or description, click the Edit List button. Click Save to save any edits.

Adding titles to a list from the catalog

When you perform a search in the catalog, the Add to my list option will appear on the right hand side of each result.

If you click Add to my list, you'll see a popup menu of lists, similar to:

Any created lists will appear here. You will also have the option to see all your lists or to "Add to new list". (If you select this option, you will be taken to your My Lists page to create a new list. Nothing will be added. You will have to create the list and then return to your search results to add titles.)

To add a title to an existing list, simply click the name of the list. Note that the search results page may reload after adding the title to your list. In our example, I can click "I <3 the 80s" to add the associated title to my list.

If you return to your My Lists page and click on the appropriate list, you'll see the titles you've added.

Note: 

If you don't plan on keeping a list longer than your current session, you may want to use the Basket function instead. See its section in our Help page for Searching and Browsing the Catalog for more info.

Adding items from your basket to a list

To add items from your basket to a list, use the Basket Action Add basket to saved list.

After submitting the action, select the desired list from the Move selected items to list dropdown or create a new list by clicking Add to New List.

You can also check to clear the basket after performing the action if desired.

For more information on Baskets, please see its section in our Help page for Searching and Browsing the Catalog.

Setting a default list

The Default List is the list name that appears first in the dropdown menu in the catalog when you move your cursor over the Add to my list link. 

A default list is useful because it appears ahead of all other lists in the dropdown. If you have no default list, all your lists will be presented in alphabetical order. If you are working with one particular list a lot, you may want that list to appear at the top and be the new default list. 

To set a default list, navigate to your My Lists page. Next to the list you'd like to make default, click the Make Default List button. Once selected, this button becomes Remove Default List, which you can use to remove the default list if desired.

Actions for titles in a list

Opening up one of your lists from your My Lists page displays its contents. You can perform several actions on the titles in the list.

To do so, first check the titles with which you wish to perform an action, then click the desired button at the top of the list.

You will have the following options:

Sorting items in your lists

When you add items to a list you have created, they are listed in the order that you added them. You can, however, change the order by sorting the list.

When viewing a list, sortable columns will have hyperlinked headers. Click the header once to sort in an ascending manner (A-Z). Click it again to sort in a descending manner (Z-A). Title, Author, and Publication Date can all be sorted.

Notes:

In sorting by title, initial words like "A" or "An" or "The" are ignored.

Sorting by publication date only sorts based on the editions of the titles in your list. If you haven't chosen a first edition of an early work, a reprint of an early work may appear later in the list than its actual original chronological publication date.

Adding Notes to your lists

To add a note to a title in a list, first pull up your My Lists page and open the appropriate list.

1. Click on Edit next to the word Notes.

2. Type your note(s) into the text boxes that appear.

3. Click the Save Notes button.

Notes:

You can add notes to multiple items at the same time. Just add all the notes you want and then click the Save Notes button.

You delete notes by clicking on the EDIT link and then deleting the text from the text box from the note you want to remove.

Downloading your lists

Lists can be download in CSV format, (which stands for "comma separated values"). A CSV file will contain all the data from your list. CSV files can be opened in spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.


These files can be useful if you want to save your lists offline, keep them in a spreadsheet, or add other data that can't be added in the My List interface. 


Next to every list in your My Lists page is a button to Download CSV. Click this button, and your list will download.

Notes:

If you have a number of lists, you must download each of them individually by clicking their Download CSV button.

There is no way to upload lists to your account.

Sharing your lists

To make your list shareable, click the Share button next to the list's name on your My Lists page.

A new button to View in Catalogue will appear.

Click View in Catalogue to be taken to your list as seen in the catalog.

To share the list with others, copy the entire URL in your browser's address bar. This is the link you can send to others.

Notes:

Lists can be searched and filtered using the search options at the top of the screen or the facets on the left.

The title and description of your list will appear just as you entered it when you created the list. You can go back and change the title and description of the list, if you like, and your changes will be reflected immediately.

To stop sharing a list, click on the Hide button next to the list title in My Lists. Your list will no longer be visible.

Adjusting Lists per page and Items per page

You can adjust the number of lists that display per page on the My Lists page  as well as the number of items that display per page once in a list.

To make adjustments, go to the Preferences>My Lists in your account. 

Here you can set 

After making any changes, click Save. The next time you return to the My Lists tab, you should see the changes reflected.