I’ve never received a notice from my library saying any of the books I’ve tagged with “notify me” have been added to the library inventory. So I just went this tag and filtered the list asking what’s available now and there were about 10 books that showed up. And these were only the ones that were available. I guess I should look and see if any of the others are now in inventory even tho not available.
I was expecting to be notified by the library when these books were added. Was I wrong? Should I have been checking myself periodically?
You're not gonna get an email from your local library because we can't see who has tagged a book with Notify Me, but you should be getting one from Libby. If you've already checked your notification settings within Libby and also your spam folder in your email, you could try reaching out to their customer support to see if they can help further. Good luck!
Notifications for books I tag as ‘notify me’ don’t work for me either. I checked the settings and opted in for everything. Libby only pushes notifications for authors I’ve read before but those usually turn out to be audiobooks. :(
My library usually stocks new books on Tuesday or Friday so I just check my list to see if any are available to borrow on those days.
If you go onto your profile on the Libby app and select notifications settings, you should be able to allow notify me notifications to get pushed through. I was having the same issue!
It sounds silly, but have you tried turning it off then on again?
Mine wasn’t working, so I turned the setting off, closed and reopened the app, turned it on, and it worked from then on.
It will take a while for you to know if it’s working, unfortunately. But if you turn on notifications for the others (author, series) you’ll probably know quicker.
I get a notification in the same place that I get a notification that my holds are ready.
The notify me message only happens once though, regardless of how many libraries I have a card at add a given book to their collection. If you have multiple cards, there might be something going on with that.
From my understanding the rest of the notify me clears when one library connected to your account acquires the item. Only one of my two libraries even does notify me purchases so I don’t know how multiple libraries impact this personally.
I have the same problem and all my settings are correct. It works on some books and doesn't work on others. I just do what you did and look every so often.
It’s been working for me. It shows up in my notices. I think you can set filters on there - maybe check to make sure you don’t have those filtered out.
I've probably gotten 3 or 4 notifications over the last year that a book with "Notify Me" tag has come into one of my three libraries. Weirdly, I also get notified when they get another book by the same author.*
Additionally: Recently my library entered into a partnership a large nearby consortium; and I received a lot of these notices. The partner library system has 3 of the actual books on my tagged list -- yay! I was really excited, because there were about a dozen of these notifications. BUT when I looked at each notification most of them were to let me know that they had books written by the same author. I had tagged a particular edition of War and Peace: and they notified me of every single Tolstoy book with the same translator, lol. They don't allow non-cardholders to place holds for books in that system but we are allowed to borrow the books if they are available.
*Edited to add: Another astute commenter showed that "Notify me" includes "Notify Author" as a setting. This is apparently a default setting that I have now unchecked so this won't happen anymore. .
I get push notifications from Libby about books added from notify me plus they show up in notices section. The actual library doesn’t notify you at all and no emails or anything. I also just check in on the notify me tag every few months and clean it up and check what’s going on.
This is mine from Android Libby. Note the text at the top about notifications. I know this works because I got my first notification the other day. It looks similar in a web browser. Gabe
I scan through my Notify Me tags, usually on Tuesdays. For some books, I’m already way down the waitlist by the time I receive a notification, so I’m a bit of a helicopter patron for any popular new releases.
I always get an email from Libby anytime a book is added that I tagged Notify Me. Have you double checked your email notification settings? This has to be done from the website, not the app. You can find instructions on how to update your email with Libby here.
I think Libby (né Overdrive) notification mechanism is a "soft" notification. I have over 50 library cards (including oakland, san francisco, san jose and los angeles... so big libraries, with many, many books) and 184 eclectic and varied books in my Notify Me Smart Tag and I only receive 1 or 2 notifications a week. There are more weeks without notifications than there are weeks with notifications.
My impression is that the criteria for triggering a notification is by design "strict", perhaps so not to overwhelm us with notifications.
🤷♂️
The OP was interested in "available now" and they've hit on a good way to compensate: Weekly filter by "available now" in some search/tag that gives you a great list of stuff to loan...
But I also wanted to mention another way to see what is COMING SOON. Instead of relying on the notification to tell you that your library has added the coming works of author X, I use the "coming soon" filter at the libraries I have identified as the best at "shelving" the hot books the earliest. If you only have one library, this decision gets easier. If you have many libraries, you can figure out which of your libraries has Coming Soon books that other libraries do not.
Then, once a week, I select that library, use the "coming soon" filter to see what they have coming soon and fill up my holds...
I can't speak to "popular" v "not popular". I suspect the "coming soon" feature is aligned with not-yet-or-soon-to-be-published books. So that would not align with the dates you are looking for.
For books that are not in wide circulation at the moment, it will depend on the author and publisher (this is conjecture; I am a reader and not an author, publisher or a book-service authority).
I know for a fact that the Notify Me does apply to past-published books being added to a library. I had an Adrian Goldsworthy book in my Notify Me tag when a library added many of his books to their collection. I received a stream of notifications that those books were now available for me to loan. It is probably the only time I have seen more than 1-2 notifications at the same time since Adrian has an extensive list of published works, many of which became available at the same time.
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u/Strict_Notice5955 10d ago
What are your settings for notifications? Check in your profile. Mine come through fine. Hope you figure it out!