A trip to the library for me has always been about browsing — the old-fashioned way.

Crab-stepping through the stacks, my head cocked to one side the better to read titles, I typically work my way from A to Z.

Every once in a while my hand shoots out and grabs a volume. Do I judge a book by its cover? You bet I do.

I’m more likely to reach for something hefty. Five hundred pages or so, enough to keep me absorbed for a few days and then thunk back to Earth feeling like I’ve time-traveled. Or something.

If there’s a jacket, I’m guided by cover art and typography. Pensive woman with frilly hat in bucolic 19th century English landscape? Romance novel alert! Put it back!

Not that I don’t have favorite authors: Charles Dickens when I want a Byzantine plot with a zillion quirky characters, James Lee Burke for moody, gritty crime fiction.

The Boyd County Public Library has plenty of the above and more — 158,000 books, compact discs, DVDs and books on tape at its three branches. Of those, 130,000 can be checked out.

And now, I can do the same browsing at home, minus the crick in my neck. I spent part of Thursday afternoon with circulation director Betty Malcolm, who showed me some of the features of the new catalog system, called Polaris.

Browsing with the web-based system is a lot like browsing through ... well, a catalog. Pictures and all.

In fact, it reminded me of shopping on Amazon.com, except that there’s nothing to buy. But it does have similar features.

For instance, let’s say you too are a Dickens fan. You can type in his name and the software will conjure up every item in the library’s three branches associated with his name. Including “The Muppet Christmas Carol.”

To eliminate Kermit from the search you can sort by title, author, subject and so on.

The searches produce strings of results, with publishing information, descriptions and availability, and reproduces the cover in a thumbnail, a nice touch.

You log on to the system through the library’s homepage, www.thebookplace.org.

In fact, logging on was perhaps the hardest thing for me. I can hardly remember my own telephone number, much less the 14-digit bar code that serves as a user I.D.

Once logged on, however, the system homepage includes top headlines with links to the stories and a menu of features. You can see instantly how many books you have checked out.

And if you’re the forgetful type, you can sign up for an electronic nudge for when you need to get the books back — the system will send an automatic e-mail to you when items are overdue. You can renew or hold books from home, just like the old system, and set it up to notify you when your held item comes in.

The system can notify you when new items come in — like that latest installment of a murder mystery series, for instance.

There’s an “Ask Us” feature that shoots your questions straight to the reference staff, who find and e-mail answers. But they won’t do your homework for you. Sorry kids.

A separate children’s section is designed to be graphically pleasing to kids; discussions are under way to install software so kids can write reviews.

The library spent about $150,000 to convert to the system, which is now active at all three branches. On July 1, there will be what library spokeswoman Amanda Gilmore calls “a huge party” to celebrate the system, the new Web site design and a new library card design.

The system is pretty easy to figure out, but there are plenty of how-to brochures to help out.

The timing was perfect, by the way — the summer reading season is about to begin.

MIKE JAMES can be reached at mjames@dailyindependent.com or at (606) 326-2652.