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How do I sign up for e-mail notification of reserves and overdues?

Get E-Mail Notices To Save Time and Paper!

Normally, we mail reserve and overdue notices. We print the notices the next weekday morning after the reserve is triggered, and we mail them that afternoon. This means that you won't know about a reserve triggered on a Friday until the following Tuesday at the earliest. That's an entire weekend of pleasure postponed unnecessarily.

E-Mail notices, on the other hand, are sent during the night of the day that the reserve was triggered. In most cases, it will arrive in your e-mailbox within minutes. You'll know that book you've been dying to read is waiting for you one to four days sooner than someone with "snail mail" notices.

We like e-mail notices because they don't use paper or staff time and because the printer on which we print them is a bit balky. It saves us time and materials (and of course money for stamps). Also, E-Mail notice recipients also get Reminder Notices, sent two days before items are due, reminding them to renew or return the items.

You can now set up E-Mail Notification yourself over the web.

  1. In the upper right hand corner of this page, click the link for "My Account"
  2. Enter your barcode number and your PIN.
    If your account does not already have a PIN assigned, you will be asked to assign yourself one. You will have to type it twice to confirm. It can consist of digits and /or letters, and must be at least four characters long. For safety's sake, don't use the same PIN as your ATM card: the PIN is not encrypted as it travels over the Internet, although it is encrypted in your borrower record so that staff cannot see it.
  3. To set up e-mail notification or to change your e-mail address, click the link "Modify Personal Information".
  4. Fill in your e-mail address.
  5. Click submit and close the window.
  6. After you are done examining your borrower record, be sure to click the LOGOUT button.

Troubleshooting Email Notices

In rare cases, you may find that you are not getting your email notices. If so, try the following:

  1. Log on to "My Account" and check that your email address (under Modify Personal Information) is correct.
  2. If your email address is correct in your account, MLN is almost certainly sending you notices. Chances are you need to do something to your email account settings to make sure that all emails from "library.minlib.net" are always allowed through (sometimes known as "whitelisting") and are not being blocked by a spam filter. See MLN's FAQ page about this with an example of how to fix it with a Hotmail account.
  3. In rare cases, it may be necessary to contact your email account provider to ask if they are blocking all email from library.minlib.net. Tell them that MLN does not send SPAM, it only sends emails that its customers ask for, and ask them to unblock email from library.minlib.net.
  4. Last resorts:
    • Let the notices disappear into the ether and check "My Account" frequently.
    • Switch to a different email account which gives you more control over spam blocking.
    • Disable email notices and switch back to paper notices.