Minuteman Library Network

Borderline unusable since the big overhaul. Incredibly slow. Search results don’t seem accurate. Things I was able to find previously are no longer showing up, e.g. particular volumes of a manga series that I know exist suddenly can’t be found. Still has some necessary functions that I appreciate, ability to see current checkouts, overdue, renewing items, etc.

This release has some annoying bugs that make the app difficult to use. When doing an advanced search of the catalog the virtual keyboard disappears and then reappears after each keystroke - making the user pause between each letter entered. This really makes the process of typing in search criteria super painful. Also in advanced search, when searching by author the app presents as bogus results all entries that have no listed author. Lack of a field should not match a specifically entered criterion. Very weak search capability - kind of a MLN trademark. It’s often best to search on the web (much better search engine) and then use the resultant ISBN to find it in the MLN catalog.

I use this app very often, and although as an old programmer, I sometimes think “I would have done that feature differently”. I will say this: The App Just Works. On top of that, when you report bugs, they fix them really fast! I reported an app crash bug on 14-January, and the fix came out sometime before 14-February. This includes the hang-time for the report getting from my library to the developer MLN contracts with. Remember this when libertarians claim private industry is ALWAYS better than govt. Sometimes it’s the two together that excel. I wish I could get J&J to fix the bugs in their vaccine trial app (now going on 14 months broken) and The Week magazine and Xinio (now going on like 3-4 years seriously broken)