ePrep for the SAT and ACT Available Now!

I just got this in my e-mail from MyLibraryDV yesterday and I thought I would share it with everyone. You'll need your Brigham City Library card number to access any of the video on MyLibraryDV - If you have any questions just call, 723-5850. Download MyLibraryDV now!

Here's the e-mail they sent -


Come Visit Our New Channel!*

Now featuring a new channel focused
on educational programming.

STUDY AIDS
–ePrep for the SAT and ACT
Created by education and test preparation experts, ePrep has been developed around a unique set of guiding principles that includes step-by-step guidance by expert teachers.

–Rocketbook
This dynamic tool is used to engage and instruct viewers in reading the literary classics by using a visually stimulating multimedia presentation. Each chapter is broken down event by event, with an analysis that includes outlining character development and the use of traditional literary devices.

YOUNG ADULT LIFE SKILLS
For young adults of all backgrounds, these topical programs provide a realistic guide to the challenges they’ll face after graduation, whether from high school or college. These videos offer helpful advice for managing finances, landing employment, and making one’s way in the world.

GREEN MATTERS
This series offers viewers a look into what’s being done around the world, and what we can also do, to help reduce mankind’s carbon footprint. Each program brings hopeful information from governments, corporations, environmental agencies and individuals who are finding ways to improve our planet. Using the latest global perspective, this life-changing eco-friendly series deals with all things “green.”

DRAMATIZED BIOGRAPHIES
In each video, the featured historical figure, at a major turning point in his or her life, crosses paths with a young person. Through their interactions, viewers learn about the famous person’s life. Historically inspired, yet dealing with contemporary social values, this unique series makes history appealing to the whole family.

*Please note this has replaced the Documentaries channel.



Brought to you by Recorded Books

270 Skipjack Road • Prince Frederick, MD 20678
1-877-828-2833 • mylibarydv@recordedbooks.com

Helpful Reference if You Like Books in Series

Do you like to read books that are part of series? If so, here's an online resource that you may find very useful. I do! The website is called Books 'n' Bytes. They have lists of authors with the books they've written and it's listed by series. Now when I say this, please don't assume that they have every series 100% correct, because they don't. I've found mistakes in the past. But they seem to have a fairly high percentage that are correct. It's a huge task to try to keep updated on every new book in a series by so many authors, and because of this they realize they may have some mistakes or get behind sometimes. At the bottom each author's page they have an e-mail link so you can send them an update if you have information they haven't posted yet. That way you can help them maintain a list all of us can use. For the most part I use Books 'n' Bytes to check on a series listing, but they also have a lot of author interviews that can be very interesting. Read the interview with Karin Slaughter.

Fantastic Fiction is another great resource. It comes to us from the UK. It is similar to Books 'n' Bytes in a lot of ways, in that it lists the works of an author and tells us what's in the series. They list things a little differently from each other and there are things I like about both. For example, I like the page set-up on Books 'n' Bytes better. But, on the other hand, I like that Fantastic Fiction keeps the Author Index box on every page so I can go quickly from one author's page to start my search for another. On Books 'n' Bytes I have to navigate back to get to an index. These are just little things, but sometimes it makes a difference when it comes to choosing which one I want to use.

There are a lot of great book sites out there and these are just a few of my favorites. I hope you'll find them as useful as I have as you continue reading your way through life.

Elizabeth

Library Cookies!

Okay, so we may not have real cookies for you at the library, but what we do have is pretty sweet! And since Thanksgiving is right around the corner, I thought I'd list some of the things I'm thankful for. After all, I do like cookies after my turkey dinner - especially if they are pumpkin chocolate chip!

If you frequent the library, you'll already know most, if not all of the cookies I'll list here, but take a look and see if there's something you didn't know about. But please keep in mind, I've probably forgotten something. Please forgive me, especially if it is your favorite service I've forgotten. Let us know what your favorite cookie is by posting a comment.

• Available for check-out!
  
• Non-fiction
• Picture books
• Easy Readers
• Children's Chapter Books
• Novels for Teens and Adults
• Graphic Novels
  
• Award winners and nominees
• DVDs
• Videos
  
• Books on CD
• Books on Tape
• Downlaodable eAudiobooks
• CD-ROMs
• Magazines
  
• Large print
• Library Services
  
• Book Lists - From new books at our library to award winners and readers guides.
• Programs - Includes Storytimes, book groups, classes, etc.
• Internet Access
• A Literacy Program
  
• Access to Pioneer - Utah's Online Library
• NewsBank - Newpaper archives including the Deseret News, Salt Lake Tribune, and the Standard Examiner
• Online magazine and Journal archives
• Heritage Quest Online - for genealogical research
• Auto Repair Reference Center
• LitFinder - search multiple forms of literature - some results are full text
• Health Information
• Business Information

For more information on any of these service, please just contact a librarian - 723-5850.

Elizabeth

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is a long way from us. You can hardly decide to run in for a quick visit, but that doesn't mean it is not available to you when ever you're in the mood for a bit of history or need information on the Holocaust for a homework assignment.

This past summer I was able to attend a workshop at USHMM right before the annual American Library Association (ALA) meetings in Washington D.C. They talked about a lot of the different resources available in their collections and invited a survivor to speak to us. As part of ALA we were also able to use our conference badges to get into the exhibits at any time during the conference and the day after the conference. The exhibit is very neat to go through and it is a very touchingly done, I couldn't help but think that I would have gotten so much more out of it with fewer people around me so I didn't feel like I needed to hurry and let the next hundred people take a look. I'm thrilled that the USHMM has such a high visitation, but I've gotten more out of my visits to concentration camps, partly because of the quiet contemplative atmosphere that is more regularly found there. I realize this is a spatial issue for them. In a camp the entire camp is your memorial, the USHMM has a relatively small building to accommodate a lot of interested visitors. My favorite room in the USHMM was the Hall of Remembrance. It is a quiet room with just few people passing through it. With sunlight streaming through the skylight, epitaphs carved in to the walls, niches for candles to be lit, and an eternal flame burning - this was the perfect setting to house the earth that had been collected from each of the concentration camps. Upon entering the room you could feel the quiet. A quiet that is both comforting and disturbing at the same time. It was a marvelous site in the memorial to sit for a while and reflect on the past as well as on the present - to remember the dead and the survivors.

Since we all cannot get to the memorial museum to experience this as often as we may like, the USHMM has made it possible for each of us to experience may parts of their collections without ever leaving our homes! So when you have time you'd like to spend learning about the Holocaust or any issue related to genocide, or have a homework assignment associated with genocide, you can log onto their website and find a lot of great information.

The main page lets visitors know about new information and resources available on their website. Take a look at a recently donated scrapbook that shows a unique collection of photographs documenting the life of SS officers at Auschwitz. From the main page you have many options to suit a wide variety of needs. There is a Holocaust Encyclopedia, and animated map to inform visitors about the history surrounding the Holocaust, a section on education, and one on research. There are also links to help inform people about current issues involving genocide.

One of the links on their site takes you to a list of online exhibits. Take a look at the exhibit for Silent Witness: The Story of Lola Rein and Her Dress. The link for "Exhibit Information" will take you to photos and information included in their permanent exhibit as well as other exhibits currently on display at the museum. When you click into their "Collections and Archives" you will find a treasure trove of Holocaust information available to you from your home or library.

In this section there is the Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive at the USHMM which has more than 800 hours of motion picture footage in its holdings. And, luckily for us, a large percentage of these are viewable online. View this footage of American leaders speaking out against Nazi violence in 1938. If you have trouble hearing what they are saying someone has typed the text and it is in the catalog record next to the film viewer. I've taken a look at several of these films, both silent and with sound, and they have all given valuable perspectives on life during and after the Nazi era. Another section, "Life after the Holocaust", takes you into a recording of the experiences of survivors after the war.

We often have people looking for information on the Holocaust and this is a wonderful resource for them that is, tragically, underused. Take a look and see the points I've highlighted, but don't stop there. There are so many other resources available on the website. You should really take an hour some time and see what's there.

Elizabeth

Google Book Search

Many of you have probably already heard of Google Book Search, or, if not heard of it, there's a good chance you've seen it if you've done Google searches. Google Book Search is a result of cooperation between Google, many libraries around the world, and several publishers. The search provides all of us with a marvelous tool in finding information that has been kept in the world's books.

If you you don't feel very confident in trying new things on the internet, don't worry. It's really, really easy to use. You can type in a title or the name of an author and come up with a list of books matching your search term. You can type in a word you want to find books about and get a list. You can type in phrases or passages of text and find the work(s) they were published in.

Titles have a wide variety of information associated with them. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows only shows a cover image and lists some basic information about the book, for example; the author, illustrator, publisher, target age groups, page number ISBN numbers, and a short summary. But Mary Stewart's This Rough Magic also includes multiple pages of the actual book for us to read online. The entire book is not online, however, we can read quite a bit of it before we would need to find a copy in a bookstore or a library. Unfortunately Google can't yet tell you that it is in our library. You will have to check our online catalog yourself to do that, but I'm sure this feature will improve over time. Today the closest library it found with This Rough Magic was 602 miles away in Emereyville, CA, but that's okay. I'm not worried because I know it's actually just a few steps away in our fiction collection. If you are looking to buy a copy of the book for yourself it will link you to sites such as Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble to name a just a few. Titles that are no longer copyright protected will have the entire book online - that is, when they have found a partner to give them access to the book. Dante's The Divine Comedy gives you the entire book to read online or download as a pdf file.

You can even search the text of books. If you can't remember who said "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" just type it into Google Book Search and you'll get a list of results including one for Richard III - Page 104. You can find genealogy books as well. I did a search for the Delavan family and got several results. A family history, which is still under copyright, was among those. Consequently the pages were not online, but the entry listed surnames and and a Google map showing geographical locations associated with the book. I also found other histories mentioning Delavan as a family or a geographical location, both of which had the entire book online. I also searched for a line from a poem. I did know which poem it was from and the author, as it is a favorite of mine, but a lot of people come into the library looking for what poem a certain line belongs to and this is a great place to check. I looked for "And now I live, and now my life is done." I got 240 results, most of which contained the poem I wanted.

Not every book will show up on Google Book Search. It is being added to every day, but there are problems that may keep a book from having the full text added to Google's database as well. Some of the old books that would be really neat to have accessible online may not be in good enough condition to be digitized. Librarians working with the Google project have to balance protecting the copy entrusted to their care with the idea of making their books accessible the world over. When I attended ALA this past June one session involved a panel of people involved in the Google Book Project. Librarians from some of the first libraries to partner with Google and techs from Google talked about the challenges in finding copies of some of the older books that were physically in good enough condition that the process of digitization would not further harm the condition of the original. It was very interesting to hear how far they have come and it is exciting to think about all of the information it has made available to all of us!

There are many uses for Google Book Search and many more features associated with it than I have been able to cover. Take a look for yourself.

Elizabeth