App:	BrowZine™
By:	Third Iron, LLC
Price:	Free
Device:	Reviewed on an iPad

BrowZine™, by Third Iron, LLC, allows users to easily access free and licensed content from scholarly journals available from CUA Libraries.

BrowZine™ promises to deliver your academic journals to your tablet in a way that’s “fun, practical, and intuitive.” And it kind of lives up to those claims.

Before I could use the app, I had to sync my device with my BrowZine™ account. BrowZine™ sent a confirmation email. Once I clicked on the link, I was ready to go. When I open the app, the menus are at the top and the dashboard is along the bottom. I went into settings to make sure I was logged in. You need to use My Library Account login to authenticate. What’s nice about this app is that once you add your login information in the settings, you won’t have to authenticate again later.

I decided to build up a bookshelf for myself. I started browsing subjects and could not locate any on Library & Information Science. But that’s no problem because there is a subject search box and I was able to locate library journals by searching. If you know the title of the journal you’d like to peruse you can use the title search function.

You can put journals on custom bookshelves by clicking on “Add to my Bookshelf” and arrange titles where you want them. It’s a little clunky. My bookshelf disappeared a few times after I closed the app and then went back in. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it isn’t. The best feature of the bookshelf is that when new content is added to a journal title on one of your bookshelves, you receive a push notification. That’s a very easy way to keep up with your favorite journals.

The saved articles feature allows you to read articles you save later, even when you’re offline. If you are online it offers the option to browse the journal title from the saved article.

Overall, I’d say this app is not exactly fun, but it is practical and fairly intuitive. I can go up to 4 stars on this one.