DC Public Library Reviews

Response is much faster than previous version. Some suggested improvements:
1. On the “Holds” screen:
- order by place in the queue
- rather than say “PLACED” show queue
position
- send a notification when status
changes to “Being held”
2. Make the “My Lists” feature of the web page available in DCPublicLibrary.

The new app looks great and is a vast improvement over the old version.

Night and day difference in usability and functionality!

DCPublicLibrary works fine for what I need it to do: tell me what books are at my library, give me the call number, and place a hold. I haven’t tried to use it for digital items.

It’s a little slow, but it works fine. The website is faster and has more filtering options, but when you’re on your phone and not a desktop computer, this is quite alright in lieu.

I’ve given DCPublicLibrary years to improve or at least for me to get used to it and it’s still terrible. The old DCPL app was awesome (easy, fast) and I used it all the time. This one is so slow requests often timeout. DCPublicLibrary regularly crashes entirely when you try to renew a library loan. When you request a hold, there’s no indication that it’s processing (except sometimes you can see a faint white spinning wheel) and it takes so long to process like close to 2-3 minutes that you press the button again which leads to an error message. Add to that the fact that you can’t see how many holds there currently are on a book until you request it. The only thing that is useful about DCPublicLibrary is recreating your library card barcode if you lose the card. But even then it’s so slow that even the librarians recommend taking a screenshot and saving it to favorites. Save yourself the frustration and access the DCPL through a web browser.

I was super excited when I learned there was a DC public library app, Since I often borrow digital books, I thought this would be a great way to manage and renew in the future instead of always having to log onto the website. However when I logged in there was no information about any of my digital borrows or holds, instead it only had information regarding physical books. I wonder if this is a glitch though? Since the description specifically said digital was included… Also a very very slow app. I would not have mind the speed if there was actually the info I was looking for though! Guess I’m stuck with the website for now.

DCPublicLibrary is so cumbersome and painfully slow that it is almost quicker for me to just walk to the library and check the shelves myself. The only reason I give it two stars is because it's possible to renew books while I'm out of town. But, it may be the worst designed and performing app I've ever used. DC probably paid a fortune to develop this lemon.

Slow, difficult to use, and its main features are often rendered useless by various bugs.

Don’t bother - just use the DC library website.

DCPublicLibrary has more features than the prior DCPL app, but one major flaw - it's very slow to load each action, even over wifi. And renewing books now takes multiple steps, with load time for each step, compared to the old app that responded immediately and let you renew multiple books much quicker.

I’d hoped to use DCPublicLibrary to manage my digital and non-digital use. Instead, I found DCPublicLibrary to be useful only for finding locations. I could not find out if a book is in the system. A book that I know is in the system, could not be put on hold.
I’m not sure what the purpose of DCPublicLibrary is as it is currently configured.

When first downloaded DCPublicLibrary was great, but within the past few months it’s totally broken down. Log in to your account and you can’t view anything; try to pull up your library card and it goes haywire. If they can’t fix this, DCPublicLibrary has essentially zero functionality.

I don’t know whether it is the developers fault or whether DC has incompetent admin staff, DCPublicLibrary appears to have been written by someone who has never designed an app before, and didn’t do any research either. It’s excessively slow, crashes regularly, and doesn’t have some basic functionality. An embarrassment.

DCPublicLibrary is horribly slow and nearly impossible to use. No filtering or sorting capability either. It's nearly total garbage. Shame on you DCPL. Shame on you, shame on your family, shame on your ancestors.

Slow, buggy, lousy. Don’t use it.

App won’t scan bar code & I can’t log in. Totally useless.