Delicious is living up to its name this month! Take a look at our newly tagged websites. It is food and fun galore.

Will you be cooking a turkey during the holiday season?

The University of Illinois Extension’s Turkey for the Holidays page offers some Turkey cooking techniques, Turkey Safety, Turkey fun facts, and perfect side dishes for your turkey feast. Cooks, teachers, aspiring early childhood educators, parents and more will find their Turkey Fun section something to gobble about- lots of useful links to activities and information for kids and the young at heart. Find this page in the Current_Interest tag or under Cooking.

Make your holiday and everyday safe by checking out our web selections under the Food_Safety tag. Websites about proper food storage and food handling as well as a link to FoodSafety.gov which not only offers food safety tips and information but provides alerts to food recalls. The link to the USDA food handling sheets provides information about freezing and storing food- great information for saving leftovers.

How about some gift buying help? The Federal Trade Commission offers tips on buying gift cards as well as contact numbers for gift cards problems or complaints. Find this page under our Current_Interest tag.

Want to know the holiday numbers? The Census Bureau gives a rundown of the 2009 Holiday season on their Facts for Features page. Find this page in Current_Interest as well as in Statistics.

Want to “green” your holidays this year? Check out the fantastic tips from the Sierra Club, making your wrapping paper, pesticide free trees and more. Find this page in several places: Current_Interest, Holidays, and Sustainability.

Learn about Christmas traditions from around the world or get some information on other Holidays of Light- take a look at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Technology’s page. Find it under Holidays, Current_Interest, Holiday_History or the Culture tag.

Hope you have a terrific Winter Break and we look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

Due to a sharp decrease in usage for the open lab in LR205 and an increase in library instruction requests, the LR 205 Library Instruction Classroom will not be available as an academic only computer lab beginning with the Spring 2010 semester.

Computers are available on the 1st and 4th floors of the library. Also, a complete list of computer labs is available at the reference desk and online.

Next time you stop by the Library at Central Campus take a moment to pause at the information kiosk and enjoy the pictures of our library staff of the month: Amy Burns, Jonathan Carter, and Steve Osler. We have included one comment about each staff member below, but stop by in-person to find out other things that distinguished them for the honor to be nominated by their colleagues. Join us in congratulating them!

• Amy Burns – “Never too busy to come to the rescue when there’s a problem, and always has an answer”
• Jonathan Carter – “Goes above and beyond his job description”
• Steve Osler – “Innovative, productive, technologically savvy, and knowledgeable”

Did you know you can access the encyclopedia World Book Online through the Reference subject area in the Research Databases section of our website?

Encyclopedias can be an invaluable starting point for finding information about a particular topic. For example, let’s say you are writing about how family-life has changed over time for a sociology class. Using the article in World Book titled “Family” will allow you to learn about changes in the family-unit from ancient times through today in just a few pages, but don’t stop after reading the encyclopedia article! From there, the specific topics covered in the article can be used to search for more in-depth information in books and articles.

Wikipedia can be used in the same fashion. When using Wikipedia the citations at the end of each article are particularly useful for finding more information on the topic. Just make sure you check with your instructor about what types of resources are appropriate for your assignment.

It is all about the Videos on Delicious!

Your CPCC librarians have gathered a whole host of websites that feature “Smart People” talking, teaching and thinking about a variety of topics.

Start with Harvard and watch a series of video lectures on computers and the internet from instructor David Malan at Harvard Extension. The course “Understanding Computers and the Internet” arms students with a new vocabulary and readies them for further exploration of computers and the Internet. Topics include hardware, software, the Internet, multimedia, security, website development, programming, and dotcoms. This course is designed both for those with little, if any, computer experience and for those who use a computer every day. The videos of the lectures are available in QuickTime or flash formats. Oh, and did I mention- they are FREE.

Or maybe all that Ivy league is leaving you itching for something a little more down to earth- How about the fabulous selection of videos on Monkeysee.com? MonkeySee offers free access to a huge collection of videos produced by experts on topics ranging from how to create the perfect zombie make-up, how to improve your handwriting, to topics like personal finance and general health. Each video is preceded by a 30 second ad, but the site requires no registration or fees to view the videos.

Visit the Stanford Health Video Library to watch free programs featuring prominent doctors presenting the latest health research.

In a healthy mood now? Watch videos from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Topics include HIV, Swine Flu, Swimming Safety, Weight Gain and Weight Control, Immunizations and more. Easily embed the videos in your course or webpage with the provided embed code. And great for use in the classroom; PDFs of the scripts are provided with each video.

Want more smart people to learn from? Take a look at Fora.TV. This website offers an impressive array of speakers, thinkers, politicians, writers and more. ForaTV gathers the web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences and publishes it online for you to watch, learn and share. The coolest thing about the videos on ForaTV is the variety of ways you can enjoy the presentations. Each program offers a link to the full length lecture in addition to several shorter highlight clips. Many of the videos offer transcripts as well as Bios of each presenter.

So far your CPCC library has 27 different video sites selected for your lifelong learning pursuits… and we are adding more each day- check out what the web has to offer.

CPCC Library has trial access to the Springer eBook collection and we would like to extend the invitation to the rest of the college. CPCC students, faculty and staff can view 30,000 science, technical, and medical related eBooks through SpringerLink until October 30th, 2009.

Access SpringerLink Now
Let us know what you think. Complete a short survey.

Note: Make sure to select a content type. This can be done before searching (see the example below) or from the search results page.

LearningExpress Library offers many options to help you practice for a variety of tests. The site even has over 150 eBooks available for download in PDF format.

From their site — “Whatever your goal, LearningExpress Library’s resources will help you succeed. Each of our Learning Centers offers the practice tests, exercises, skill-building courses, and information you need to achieve the results you want—at school, at work, or in life. Looking to land a job? You’ll find an entire Learning Center dedicated to helping you get the one that’s right for you.”

To access this valuable resource head to Research Databases and LearningExpress Library will be listed under Popular Databases.

CPCC Library offers many credible resources that you can access from the comfort of your home computer. The items listed below, and more, can be found in the Research Databases section of the website in the Business and Economics section.

Business Source Premier
Includes magazine and journal articles on many business related topics. Also inlcudes company profiles, industry reports, country reports, and market research reports.

MorningStar Investment Research Center
This useful database has detailed information on stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs.

Reference USA
Think of Reference USA as the Yellow Pages on steroids. RefUSA gives detailed profile information on national and local companies including sales volume, number of employees, and business expenditures. Using the custom search feature you can perform a search for specific types of businesses within a defined radius.

If you think your favorite librarian deserves an award… submit a nomination at http://www.ilovelibraries.org/lovemylibrarian/home.cfm for the 2009 Carnegie Corporation of New York/New York Times I Love My Librarian Award. This award recognizes your librarian’s efforts to improve the lives of people in his/her community. If selected, he/she will receive a $5,000 cash award, a plaque and a $500 travel stipend to attend an awards ceremony and reception in New York, hosted by The New York Times. Nomination deadline is October 9, 2009.

Start your semester off right! Come meet your campus librarians at Cato, Levine, Harper, Harris or North during the week of August 24-27, and enter a drawing to win great door prizes! Please be sure to bring your valid CPCC ID card to be eligible to receive some fun prizes and goodies that we have for you. Students and employees are all welcome!