Fill out a library survey by May 4th and you can be entered into a drawing for one of two $10 gift certificates to the library coffee bar! Winners will be announced here and on social meda.

You should have gotten an email on your student account on April 30 with a link to get to the survey. If you need help with that please let us know.

We take the results of the survey seriously and we try to make changes based on your input. Thanks for taking the time to give us your feedback!

We thought it might be time to take a second look at Films on Demand. By the end of this summer we will have had this streaming video database for a full year, and in that time they've tremendously improved their database. Here just are a few ways:
  • Films on Demand now works on iPads and mobile devices
  • Subject categories have been expanded to make browsing easier
  • Platform changes have made it easier to use their website
  • They've added thousands of new videos (3543)!

If you haven't used Films on Demand lately - or at all - we want to help you! We've put together a guide for using Films on Demand to answer some of the frequent questions people ask as they get started. There you can also find step by step guides showing you how to use a video in a presentation like Powerpoint, how to make a playlist of several back-to-back videos, and three different guides on how faculty can add videos to Blackboard.

If you're wondering what kind of videos Films on Demand offers, here is a small sample to pique your interest:
  • Over ten Films by Ken Burns including Baseball and The Civil War
  • Great Philosophers series on Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche, and more
  • How Art Made The World series
  • World Literature section
  • Drama and the Theater section
  • World Languages including Spanish and French
  • Careers and Job Searches section

About this database: Films on Demand is a streaming video database that specializes in educational and academic content. Films on Demand has thousands of full-length videos and video segments that are ideal for class presentations, projects and lesson plans. You can find it here or find the link on the library's Journals and Databases page.

It's been some time since the library had a major book push, but the suggestions keep coming. And they typically include words like, "please" and "thank you." But, in a way, that's our line...because it's the library that truly benefits from such transactions.

If not for suggestions, how would we acquire worthwhile books about agile software development? The answer is...we probably wouldn't. The library staff may be agile, but not in the area of software development. It takes a software expert to recommend such texts. And, thankfully, one did earlier this semester—via e-mail to the library director (Hope Shull). The result is a stronger collection in that part of the library.

Another way suggested books are getting in the stacks is through a handy link on the library's webpage. It's a link with very suggestive terminology: Suggest a Book We Should Own. Since the start of the school year, the link has been used almost 30 times, including 15 requests from students. One such student completed a survey last year and commented that the library had purchased just about everything he/she had suggested, and it was music to our ears.

There are plenty of suggested items in the collection (like the two titles pictured above), but we could use a lot more. Would you mind sharing some with us? Please? Thank you!

STAT!Ref is an online collection of nursing resources - like medical guides, dictionaries and reference manuals.

They've also just released an app for your iPhone/iPad or Blackberry, with plans to release an Android app soon. But before you use the app, you'll need to set up an account on Stat!Ref's website. Here's how:

1.	Go to STAT!Ref (from off campus you'll be asked for your FHU login)
2.	Click Your Preferences in the upper right corner
3.	Enter your email, pick create an account, and click OK
4.	Fill out your info and set a password and click Create Account
5.	Click the Temporary Login Account tab
6.	Click the Activate/ Renew button

Now that you've made your account, search in the app store for statref. There will be only one result and that's the one you want. When you use the app for the first time you'll log in using the account you just made.

More information about the Stat!Ref app is available for the curious!

The FHU Library is participating in a referral program with Amazon.com. What that means is that if you buy something on Amazon, they'll donate a part of your purchase to the library! This is a great way to help the FHU Library without doing anything extra. Well, you have to do one tiny thing...

How to do it: On the library home page you'll find this Amazon icon and a link. You can also find that same link here; you might want to bookmark it for later. Use that link to go to Amazon when you start your shopping – or at any other point up until checkout. There are no codes to enter and no special logins. Just use that link and then a percentage of your purchase gets donated to the library. Up to 10%!

You may be asking...

Am I paying extra for this?  Nope! You don't pay anything extra. Nothing added to your purchases, nothing added to the shipping, nothing added to the tax. Amazon sends us the percentage out of their pocket.

Do you see what I'm buying? Or... say, would you tell me what someone's getting me for Christmas?  Amazon doesn't report to us who purchased what or who searched for what. We just know how many people clicked on our Amazon link, and we get a total dollar amount. So we wouldn't be able to spill the beans on what anyone's getting for Christmas, even if we wanted to.

What kind of things do I have to buy? Just books?  You can buy pretty much anything: books, electronics, toys, music, subscriptions, groceries, etc. New or used.

What happens if Amazon gives the library money for something I buy, but then I want to return it?  You can still return it just like always. All that would happen is the money would be deducted from our account. But that's okay.

So if you do any Christmas shopping on Amazon.com this holiday season, just remember you can also give a gift to the library. Oh, and this is not JUST for the holiday season. The program is up and running all the time.

Thanks to David Novak for sharing his collection of World War II pieces with the FHU Library. You can find his collection in the display cases behind the circulation desk, except for one item that's also available online...

In 1943, David's parents made a Living Record at a USO Club while his father was stationed in the States. David has recently digitized this recording and made it publicly available on his facebook page. Click the record on the left to go to his site and listen to the three minute recording - and while you're there, drop David a note!

The Library would like to say thank you to all our Veterans for their service!

The Royal Society has announced that the archives of its 350 year old Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society are now available free online. Maybe you haven't heard of this gem, but do you know who has? Benjamin Franklin. It's where he published his "flying a kite in a thunderstorm" experiment in 1751. Who else? Isaac Newton. He published his first scientific paper here in 1671. Not to mention Charles Darwin, Stephen Hawking, Michael Faraday, and well, 350 years' worth of the world's leading scientists.

The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific publisher and the Royal Society journal, began in 1665, is the world's first peer-reviewed journal. It's still in print today, although recent issues of the journal won't be available in the free archives just yet.

The GRE has undergone an overhaul this year. As of August 1, 2011 if you take this graduate school entrance exam you'll be taking the brand new Revised GRE General Test. Of course if you've never taken the GRE before, it would be brand new to you anyway. In any case, we want to help you prepare for the new format of this important exam.

We have several resources available in the library and hope to be purchasing more as they become available. You can see a list of the resources currently available on the GRE Study Aids page on the library's website.

In addition the printed study guides you'll find there, take a minute to check out LearningExpress Library. This online database has six practice tests for the new GRE that you can take from home. To try these tests, go to LearningExpress Library and register as a new user. After that go to College Students on the left and then Graduate School Entrance Exams. Just be sure to register at some point or else you won't be able to add these tests to your profile. After that you can take and retake the GRE or any of the tests you find here.

We have a new subscription this summer: Films on Demand, a streamable video database that specializes in educational and academic content. Films on Demand has thousands of full-length videos and segments that are ideal for class presentations, projects and lesson plans.

How to get into the database: Start by going to Films on Demand, either by following that link or by finding it on our Journals and Databases page. If you're off campus you'll be asked to provide your FHU credentials at this point, but not from on campus. Once you're at the database, you don't have to have an account to use it but you might want one so you can mark your favorite videos and make playlists. If you want to create an account, click the blue User Log In button at the top and then go to Create a User Account.

What to do with a video: You can find videos on a subject by browsing the subject areas on the left: clicking a subject will bring up a page-long list of narrowed topics in that area. You can also try searching for a keyword in the search area at the top. Once you've found a video, click on it and you'll see some options for sharing it or saving it for later:

Under Details, you'll see a direct link back to this video as well as the code to embed it in a website. With Share you can enter an email address to send a short description of the video and the video's direct link. You have to create an account to use Playlist and Favorite, but if you've done that you can mark the video so you can return to it later, or you can add it to a playlist. Once you make a playlist, you'll get a URL that will play all the videos in your list back-to-back.

Just keep in mind that you can't download a video from Films on Demand. All the videos in this database are streamable over the Internet, so you can embed a video or you can use links to videos or to a playlist. If you want to use a video in a powerpoint presentation, for example, you'd probably want to put a direct link to a video or playlist on one of your powerpoint slides. Then in class click to start it in another window. Instructors: If you plan on putting a link on blackboard or emailing a link to your students, make sure to use the link that you find in the Details or Share tab as described above. Those links will have the library's proxy prefix that will let off campus students use the video.

We have two new language resources at the FHU Library. They're both available online - no software to install - and to use them all you have to do is sign up for a free account.

Linkword Language Courses:  Linkword uses images and memory techniques to help you learn vocabulary, grammar principles and sentence construction in 28 different languages. While Linkword alone won't make you fluent, it's a great tool for travelers and beginners. If you're thinking of participating in FHU's study abroad program next year, this will be perfect for getting you ready to travel Europe! We have courses in more languages through Linkword than with Rosetta Stone, so if we don't have the language you want in Rosetta Stone (like Japanese, Dutch or Welsh), you might be able to find it here.

ESL - English as a Second Language:  This is a series of 8 courses and over 60 lessons that gradually teach the English language to non-native English learners. The courses includes instruction, audio, and practice exercises aimed at quickly and efficiently improving English skills.

How to sign up:  Both Linkword and ESL are from Gorlet - so you can create one account and use it for both resources. To start, go to the Gorlet Registration Page. If you're off campus you'll first be asked to authenticate with your FHU username. Then at the Gorlet page register with whatever username and password you want, and you don't have to checkmark the "Check if this is a library card number" box. Once you submit that form, you're ready to start adding language courses to your account. The Linkword courses are at the top of the page and ESL is at the bottom. Click the plus sign following any of the languages and then select a level. A box will pop up to tell you more about that course and let you add it to your account.

When you want to login in the future, just go to www.gorlet.com and all the courses you added will be saved under the My Courses tab. You can add more languages anytime you want. Links to Linkword and ESL are also available on the library's Journals and Databases page.