Now Available: Kanopy Film Classics, Kids & Educational Programs
UPDATE: For step-by-step instructions on streaming Kanopy movies to your smart TV, consult the Kanopy page https://help.kanopy.com/hc/en-us/sections/207299708-Mobile-TV-Apps. More general Kanopy instructions can be found here: https://help.kanopy.com/hc/en-us/categories/200923998-For-Viewers
By BERNARD T. DAVIDOW
Adult Services Librarian
WILBRAHAM – Patrons now have free access to Kanopy, an online streaming service with more than 30,000 acclaimed classic and independent films and documentaries, including a rich selection for children.
Setting up an account is easy. Just go to https://wilbrahamlibrary.kanopy.com/
You can stream up to 10 films a month to a computer or a mobile phone or tablet by using the Kanopy app. Stream to a smart TV by using WiFi and Roku, an Amazon Fire TV Stick, Chromecast or AppleTV.
Kanopy bills itself as “thoughtful” entertainment. “The films that truly resonate with us do more than just entertain. They inspire us, enrich us and challenge our perspectives,” the Kanopy website says.
In addition to such popular movies as “High Noon” and the original, 1937 version of “A Star is Born,” Kanopy has films in The Criterion Collection, a subsidiary of Janus Films, which distributes international art house classics that have been restored and preserved. The collection comprises such cinematic masterpieces as Charlie Chaplin's “Modern Times”; Akira Kurosawa's “Roshomon” and “The Hidden Fortress” (inspiration for “Star Wars”); the basketball classic “Hoop Dreams”; and D.A. Pennebaker's Bob Dylan documentary “Don't Look Back,” to name a few. Kanopy also has more than 3,400 videos from the Great Courses series and such PBS fare as “Frontline,” “American Experience,” “NOVA” and Ken Burns specials.
Kanopy Kids is a section all its own, with offerings that are rated in partnership with Common Sense Media. Users can enable parental controls.
“Parents can trust that our catalog encourages social and emotional development, promotes respect for community diversity, and inspires creativity … discover the videos that spark children's imagination,” the Kanopy website says.
Kanopy Kids has popular movies for younger and older children, educational TV series, literary classics — even a section for language learning (“Spanish for Kids,” for example).
The library began offering Kanopy in November, adding to a lengthening string of digital offerings available free to patrons from wherever they are: Hoopla, Qello Concerts, AtoZ World Food recipes and cooking tips, and nearly 100 popular magazines. In addition, the library is just now introducing patrons to a recently acquired, online self-publishing platform, SELF-e, for the aspiring writers among us.
Resources for Book Groups
With fall comes our library book groups' selections for the following year. Whether your book group is ready to pick new books or you're thinking it might be fun to get some friends together, here are some resources for book groups you may enjoy:- LitLovers - A one-stop shop for all things book club, including how to get started, book reviews, reading guides - even recipes. This is a great resource for book discussion questions, including ones for generic fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, and more that may not come with a discussion guide. Best of all, it's totally free!
- BookBrowse - Another great source of reading guides and discussion questions. Some content is free, and others is only for members (fee-based).
- Publisher's websites - If you're looking for discussion questions, make sure to check out the author's or publisher's website. They're often a great resource for behind-the-scenes info about the book, and may have discussion questions, interviews with the author, and more.
- Reading Group Choices - This annual publication is a go-to resource for great book group titles, giving a short description, readalikes, and discussion questions to help you decide what to read next. The Wilbraham Public Library has 2015-2017 available, but you can request previous years from other libraries.
Hoopla: Your Entertainment Takeout Center
Digital Library Service Puts Music, Movies, Books & More At Your Fingertips
By Bernard T. Davidow
Adult Services Librarian, Wilbraham Public Library
Wouldn't you love to hear that again? That record album you tossed years ago but never replaced?
The digital entertainment service Hoopla has old albums by the ton. Maybe you liked “5150” by Van Halen, “Disraeli Gears” by Cream or “Tumbleweed Connection” by Elton John. Hoopla, a recent addition to the library's growing list of digital resources, has them, and lots more, all in the album lineups you loved, without the vinyl skips, pops and distortion you didn't.
Music – old and new – is just one Hoopla's features. The online entertainment lending service, available through participating libraries, also has feature movies, TV shows, ebooks, audiobooks and comics, all there available for you to borrow, all for free.
There's no waiting. If the item is listed, it is available for immediate use.
Wilbraham Public Library patrons can borrow up to five items a month for a set period: three weeks for ebooks, audiobooks and comics; one week for music; three days for most movies and TV shows.
There are no late fees. When the borrowing period expires, the item simply disappears from your device.
Your active library card is your ticket in.
Signing up is easy:
- Go to our website, www.wilbrahamlibrary.org, and look under “eBooks and Media” on the toolbar. (On mobile, first click on “Show Menu” link near the top of the page.)
- Click on “Hoopla.”
- Follow the instructions there. You will need your library card number.
There's a brief video showing you all this at https://www.hoopladigital.com/help
Hoopla has an app for Android, iOS and new Kindle Fire mobile devices, available where you normally find apps for your device. (We have a list of compatible Kindle Fire devices at the library service desk. In general, If you can't find the Hoopla app in the Amazon store, your device is not compatible.) You can download and stream content on mobile. You can access Hoopla with Windows and MacOS too, but you cannot download materials to a desktop computer, you can only stream them.
To date, Hoopla is not directly compatible with smart TVs unless you go through certain digital media/streaming players. Hoopla has a YouTube channel with videos showing how to sync your device with your TV using Roku, Apple TV and Fire TV. The Hoopla video channel is https://www.youtube.com/user/hoopladigital.
If you have questions, ask our adult services librarian, or go to the Hoopla site and click the “Help” link at the bottom left.
So go ahead, download that Herman's Hermits album. We won't tell anyone.
Consumer Reports: Trusted Resource When You're Looking To Buy
Get Better Access With Your Library Account
By BERNARD T. DAVIDOWAdult Services Librarian, Wilbraham Public Library
If you have an important purchase coming up, you probably want expert
advice from a place you can trust.
Here’s one option: Spend hours thrashing around the web, scouring sites
of unknown integrity, delving ever deeper into the rabbit hole. You
might get lucky.
Or just go to Consumer Reports.
Wilbraham Public Library still has the monthly print version of the
popular magazine and its annual buying guides, but it also offers free
online access to Consumer Reports through the library website,
www.wilbrahamlibrary.org, making it easier than ever to consult the
magazine’s reports, ratings and reviews.
The magazine gives out a limited amount of information for free online,
but to get the full reviews, ratings, side-by-side comparisons and other
information, you have to get behind the paywall. Our membership lets you
do that.
Patrons can find Consumer Reports under the Research & Learning heading
on the toolbar of the library’s desktop homepage. (On mobile, first
click on “show menu.”) Select “Consumer Reports” from the dropdown menu,
type in your Patron ID -- that is, your library card number -- and
you’re in.
The company’s reviews are the product of rigorous testing. (To learn
more about Consumer Reports’ research, visit its website here:
http://bit.ly/2sIstC5 )
Also, the magazine is run by a non-profit group. It takes no ads,
meaning there are no advertisers to offend with frank and scrupulous
reviews.
“We succeed in our mission every time your family gets a little bit
safer, your finances get more secure, new technologies get more
trustworthy, and the future gets that much brighter,” Consumer Reports
says on its website. “Together we are creating a fairer, safer, and
healthier world.”
International Cuisine At Your Fingertips
You've Got Recipes From 174 Nations With AtoZ World Food
By BERNARD T. DAVIDOW, Adult Services LibrarianStarting this year, your Wilbraham Public Library card is also your free pass to a premium international-foods website with thousands of recipes from 174 countries.
The culinary website, called AtoZ World Food, a product of World Trade Press, is the latest in a smorgasbord of free online resources available at www.wilbrahamlibrary.org.
AtoZ has individual pages for each country, Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. From a world map on the homepage, pick the country you want and get a page devoted to that nation’s cuisine.
Foods are grouped by category: appetizers, soups, salads, main dishes, side dishes, desserts, beverages, sometimes a holiday favorite. In a large number of instances, click on the name of the dish and the recipe appears.
You can also find a recipe by searching by specific dish rather than by country. You like borscht? They’ve got borscht. Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine each has its own version of the beet-based soup, and then there’s Shchavel Borscht, also called “green borscht” or sorrel soup, from Belarus.
Maybe you don’t like borscht. For you, the proof might be in the pudding. A search yields fish pudding, plum pudding, malva pudding (Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland varieties), crayfish pudding, yorkshire pudding, mung bean pudding, wheat berry pudding, rice puddings and more.
Save your favorite meals in a section called “My Recipes.”
AtoZ has a handy calculator for measurement conversions right on its site. In addition, there are sections devoted to ingredients, glossaries, historical timelines, “food inventions” and even one for notable food quotations. I liked this one, from humorist and journalist Calvin Trillin, under “humor” quotes: “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
Home cooks should find AtoZ World Food a useful resource. The publisher suggests that students writing school reports on specific countries could find it useful too, as could international food clubs.
On the desktop library website, AtoZ is listed among our “Research & Learning” databases. You can also get there from this link. So log on, sign in with your library card, and explore the planet for something wonderfully exotic to eat.
Bon appétit!
Your Portal to Photos, Maps of Old Wilbraham
By Mary Bell, Assistant Library Director
If you love history, you definitely want to check out the Digital Commonwealth at www.digitalcommonwealth.org.
The Digital Commonwealth hosts digitized photographs, postcards, letters, documents, maps and sound recordings from over 130 cultural institutions in Massachusetts. They even have links to lesson plans that feature collections of Digital Commonwealth members, from “Civil War Letters” to “Teaching with Historic Maps.”We have utilized digitization services through the Boston Public Library to make photographic collections and a maps collection available to anyone with access to a computer.
You can go directly to all our collections at http://bit.ly/2bS8jct. We have a few hundred digitized photos from the mid-1800s to the 1920s that include people and places throughout Wilbraham, and some in Hampden and Springfield.
Are you researching your family history? We have photographs of Bennetts, Days, Mowrys, Seavers and more. Our Glendale Collection includes several families that lived in the vicinity of Monson and Glendale Road. Find out what Wilbraham agriculture looked like at the turn of the 20th Century, where people in that area went to church, and how the community came together to send off one of their own when he was drafted in 1917.
One of the oldest photographs in our collections is a fascinating example, at left: Allyn Delos Seaver and his brother-in-law Cassius Benedict, taken c. 1866-1872. While the original is quite small (about 4 inches by 2 inches) the digital copy allows you to zoom in and inspect details such as their mode of dress, the patterned floor they stand on, and even their facial hair.The maps collection is our newest addition to Digital Commonwealth. Currently comprising 21 maps, the collection has everything from past zoning maps to a colorized map of Hampden & Hampshire counties that includes the four towns unincorporated to make way for Quabbin Reservoir.
We'd love to hear about what you discover in our online collections. Let us know if you need a hand to get started!
