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Collage of screenshots from the featured films.

Can you believe the summer is almost over? Make the most of these final weeks by exploring these intriguing Docuseek films, hand-picked by our library student assistants. This fifth installment brings us stories from around the world--from kitchens in the Cyclades to the waterways of Mexico; from an impoverished neighborhood in Havana to an Olympic training center in Colorado; and from the ancient forests of British Columbia to early virtual worlds in Myst Online.


In the final installment of A Perfect Meal, sustainability takes center stage. Not only is the diet beneficial for our health, but it also turns out to be good for the planet. The Mediterranean diet is based on seasonal ingredients and emphasizes fresh produce. Watch the last episode to see how the Mediterranean diet benefits not only your health but also the Earth. By Nadia

In the early days of online gaming, a group of independent creators developed Myst Online, which unfortunately did not receive as much attention as their original game Myst. The game, however, survived through the collaborative efforts of its dedicated fans. Join Max, also known by his player name Zib, as he talks about the Myst Online experience as one of its loyal community members who had been following along since the game’s launch in the mid-2000’s. By Kianna

This documentary looks into the relationship between the ancient forests of British Columbia and the Indigenous people of the lands. Corporations aim to exploit the resources of the forests through old-growth logging, but this film follows the people in their fight for the forests. Features interviews with many people who take part in the protection and advocacy of the forests and the culture of the Indigenous people, and who are opposed to clear-cut logging in the area. By Gabby

Going against the norms in Olympic weightlifting and mainstream culture, Cheryl Haworth redefines what it means to be fit and healthy. We follow her journey to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as she faces injuries, but also how she accepts her size regardless of societal norms. The raw emotions throughout the documentary depict her vulnerability, mindset, and strength as a female weightlifter of her size.

Peer into an empowering mother’s life through artistically framed and shot scenes. Afibola is a Black, queer woman raising her son Olorun in Havana, Cuba, and this is not without unique challenges. Living under impoverished conditions, she and her partner work hard to support their family, while protecting and strengthening Olorun in a society that treats and views him as lesser simply because of the color of his skin. By Kianna

This 64-minute documentary talks about the Indigenous people of Mexico, their relationship with water, and their continuous struggle for water to help grow their crops. The people featured in this documentary tell their stories about how things used to be before, when water was abundant, and how the lack of water in their rivers has affected their lives and livelihoods. Also discussed are the change in rainy weather patterns and the government's negligence in mishandling sewage and pollution from the city of Pinotepa Nacional. By Gabby


We hope you have enjoyed the Docuseek films chosen by our library student assistants this summer, and maybe even had the chance to explore some of them. Which ones were your favorites? We will continue to share student picks from time to time.

As a reminder, our electronic resources are available to all current Leeward CC faculty, staff and students. When accessing our resources from off campus, you may be prompted to log in with your UH credentials first. If you have any questions, please reach out to our friendly librarians at lccref@hawaii.edu.

Collage of screenshots from the featured films.

Ready for the fourth installment of our student-curated Docuseek films? This week's lineup includes documentaries on nutrition, the dawn of the Internet, cosmetic surgery, the Holocaust, Japanese female wrestling, and the Tunisian Revolution.


In the fourth installment of A Perfect Meal, researchers examine the adverse effects of consuming a Western diet. Lowering your risk of early-onset dementia and other brain-related diseases is just one of the many benefits of adopting a Mediterranean diet. Watch this short episode to learn how the Mediterranean diet can help address the global health crisis. By Nadia

One of the oldest hobbyist game development tools was created in 1991, known as ZZT. Doctor Dos, an avid user of ZZT, maintains a repository to preserve a record of the plethora of games that have come across this platform. This short film showcases the history of ZZT and the many different kinds of games that were created by amateur game developers with this free, open source tool. By Kianna

With the arrival of new technologies and media, becoming beautiful has never been easier and more desired. Made Over in America discusses the complex relationship between beauty and ourselves, as technology enables us to see ourselves in ways that would've been impossible in the past. Producers, surgeons, reality show participants, everyday college students, and psychologists converse about how society’s attitude towards beauty is altered due to the convenience of plastic surgery and the expectations of being beautiful.

Upon its publication, the international bestseller Maus took the world by storm through its unique storytelling of the Holocaust, garnering mixed reception from its publishers to its readers. This documentary captures the author’s thoughts, the struggle to even create and print the then-controversial comic, and the reactions of actual Holocaust survivors and their families. A significant piece of historical work, the only way to truly experience Maus is to read it. By Kianna

In a society where women are expected to be docile and submissive, Gaea Girls are a group of Japanese female wrestlers who opposed the typical expectation. Their training is rough and intense just like any other athlete’s regimen, making some feel as though they are distinguished individuals in the ring. This documentary shows the physical and mental frustrations these trainees face while trying to become a professional wrestler.

This 90-minute documentary looks at the Tunisian Revolution which leads to the wider Arab Spring. The film follows two women who have differing perspectives post-revolution on the state in which to rebuild their country along two different political parties which they each are part of. Each explains how their country should move forward in its post revolution phase. As Tunisia moves in reconstructing their nation in different ways, the film follows these two women and their families through several years of Tunisian government, revolution, election, and politically fueled incidents. By Gabby


Many thanks to our library student assistants for their thought-provoking Docuseek selections. With such a diverse range of films, there's truly something for everyone to learn from and enjoy.

As a reminder, our electronic resources are available to all current Leeward CC faculty, staff and students. When accessing our resources from off campus, you may be prompted to log in with your UH credentials first. If you have any questions, please reach out to our friendly librarians at lccref@hawaii.edu.

Collage of screenshots from the featured films.

We are back with the third round of student-selected Docuseek films! This week’s documentaries cover a rich variety of topics spanning diverse historical eras and regions around the world.


In the third installment of A Perfect Meal, researchers discuss the benefits of adding more vegetables and fruits to your diet. A study of several participants with a peculiar mutation that allows cancerous polyps to grow in their intestines showed a decrease in inflammation when they adopted a Mediterranean diet. Tune in to discover other benefits that come from switching to a Mediterranean diet! By Nadia

Curious about the Internet’s earlier days? One of the earliest online chat environments, WorldsChat, was created in 1994, and even today, it remains a relatively safe, unmonitored gathering place for all sorts of people. Issac Thacker, better known by his screen name GradualDIME, a self-proclaimed archivist that operates in WorldsChat, talks about his memories and experiences in this unique online chat game. By Kianna

Garçonnières is a documentary filmed by an anthropologist, Celine Pernet, in hopes to understand the relationship with masculinity. She interviews men to discuss what it means to be a man in the 21st century as they converse about love, couples, and even fatherhood. It allows us to understand how society has shaped the way humans act, process, and connect things in a certain way.

Learn about a period of American history that is fading from our memories--the Salem Witch Trials. Persisting into the modern day, the persecution of fabled witches was merely a disguise and excuse to punish women who did not conform to society. In this documentary, 400 years of history is dug up and researched by Alice Markham-Cantor, a writer and eleven-time great-granddaughter of an innocent woman hanged during these dark times. By Kianna

A documentary on prostitution in urban Brazil that consists of interviews with residents and women involved in the profession. The interviewees discuss life before and outside of prostitution, their families, and working life. Hardships include troubles with law enforcement, disease, and health. Many of the women state that they partake in prostitution to fulfill their need to provide for their families and put food on the table. By Gabby

This documentary looks into the lives of some of the 23 resistance fighters of the Affiche Rouge, who were executed in 1944 by Nazi occupiers in France. The fighters were labelled on a notorious red poster as foreigners, communists, and Jews. Friends and family close to the resistance fighters talk about their lives from what they can recall and from what the fighters left behind through letters left to their loved ones before execution. By Gabby


Mahalo to our library student assistants for sharing their Docuseek picks. What will you discover?

As a reminder, our electronic resources are available to all current Leeward CC faculty, staff and students. When accessing our resources from off campus, you may be prompted to log in with your UH credentials first. If you have any questions, please reach out to our friendly librarians at lccref@hawaii.edu.

Collage of screenshots from the featured films.

Our library student assistants are back with the second round of curated picks from Docuseek. Offering more than 3,000 high-quality independent films with an emphasis on social and environmental issues, Docuseek is an invaluable resource for teaching and learning. Why not get started with one of the following standout selections?


Become inspired and emotionally invested in a facet of life that is commonly taken for granted: music. A classical pianist worthy of eternal preservation across time and space, take a look at how impactful Ludwig van Beethoven’s compositions have been on people from different backgrounds. To most, Beethoven’s music pieces are simply works of art, but to the individuals in this documentary, they mean salvation, hope, and freedom. By Kianna

Motherhood is a beautiful thing, but there is a side to it that is often not seen. The wife of a passionate film director, Valerie’s happiness was captured through a camera lens, but it failed to document her descent into depression. Once a respected and renowned makeup artist, she slowly fell apart after having to trade her old life to fulfill her role as a mother of two. Emotional and intimate, this documentary is an ode to all women like Valerie who feel like they sacrificed their freedom for family. By Kianna

This documentary follows a woman who helps connect families with those who have loved ones incarcerated. The film follows a van and the woman named Kristal who drives it and her story with her own family being in and out of prison and how that has affected her life and her loved ones as well. Their story revolves around love, the unsureness of it all, hope, and their rocky journey. The film emphasizes the flaws in the criminal justice system and the disproportionate impact on Black and Brown people. By Gabby

Vincent Van Gogh’s rise to become one of the most renowned artists is a tale of struggle and perseverance. This documentary follows his sister-in-law, Johanna Van Gogh, facing over 15 years of disdain in order to follow her late husband’s ambition for the world to see Vincent’s artwork. With beautiful impressionistic-style animations and rich emotions, this documentary brings their story to life, one of passion and resilience--if people can understand the man, perhaps they will understand his craft.

This film discusses the use of pharmaceuticals that help the consumer find happiness, lessen pain, or even attain peace. The documentary follows six individuals from six different countries who face different personal issues such as ADHD, anxiety, depression, tiredness from work, etc. It shows how everyone faces similar struggles despite living different scenarios, and questions if humans use pharmaceuticals as a crutch rather than constructing their own happiness.

In the second installment of A Perfect Meal, researchers explore the many benefits of olive oil, also known as liquid gold. During this episode, a study involving approximately 7,500 participants was conducted to examine the benefits of adopting a diet rich in fats from olive oil. Tune in to find out the results! By Nadia


Many thanks to our library student assistants for their summaries. We'll be posting these throughout the summer, so stay tuned!

As a reminder, our electronic resources are available to all current Leeward CC faculty, staff and students. When accessing our resources from off campus, you may be prompted to log in with your UH credentials first. If you have any questions, please reach out to our friendly librarians at lccref@hawaii.edu.

Docuseek student picks, part 1.

Summer is here! It's the perfect time to expand your worldview and gain fresh perspectives. Fortunately, the Leeward CC community has access to Docuseek, the premier resource for curious minds. But with more than 3,000 high-quality documentaries to choose from, how do you get started?

We consulted with members of our most important campus community: our students! Please enjoy these film recommendations, personally selected and summarized by our awesome library student assistants.


Kianna's Picks

Take a trip through the history of the Olympics to learn about the women athletes whose achievements were lost to rigid gender stereotypes during their time. This short film highlights game-changing competitors that were never taken seriously simply due to their gender. The discrimination and scrutiny faced by women in the past persists into the modern world of athletics, additionally impacting women of color and the LGBTQ+ community.

Follow filmmaker Martina Radwan’s touching six year journey, as she guides and mentors three Mongolian children, Baaskaa, Baani, and Nasaa, through their youth in an emotional documentary. From orphans living on the street and being forced into child labor, Martina was the one person who stayed to help equip these kids with skills, education, and values so they could have a chance at success and survival in their merciless world.


Nadia's Picks

In the first episode of The Perfect Meal series, we dive into the health risks associated with the Western diet and explore the benefits of embracing a Mediterranean way of eating. Through vivid storytelling and expert insights, this episode unveils the impact of highly processed foods and contrasts them with the wholesome, nutrient-rich meals of the Mediterranean. Discover why this age-old diet could be the key to healthier living in a world increasingly overwhelmed by unhealthy food choices.

In this short film, Adonis, the director explores the underground world of bodybuilding, shedding light on the impact of steroid use and the unhealthy body image that dominates modern society. The story follows a group of young men as they navigate their journeys with fitness, self-esteem, and peer pressure. As they delve deeper into the world of extreme bodybuilding, the film emphasizes the physical and psychological consequences of their choices, particularly focusing on how societal expectations and toxic masculinity drive them toward dangerous solutions for self-improvement. The director's aim is to raise awareness of the harmful effects of steroid use and the societal pressures that contribute to male body insecurities.


Gabby's Picks

This 93-minute documentary looks into the US housing crisis with its racial inequality and classism. The film interviews those who have experienced being houseless and their feelings on the housing crisis along with their own individual experiences. They share their stories on the hardships and how they can advocate within their own community through this crisis. The film features groups that advocate for affordable housing, one of them being Moms4housing which is an activist group created by three formerly homeless Black women that advocate for housing rights. The film talks about the importance of finding solutions and working together to solve this crisis so that others do not have to go through this forever. The film also emphasizes the history of how people of color and ex-convicts face the brunt of the housing crisis and continue to do so affecting every aspect of their lives.

This 28-minute documentary relates a women’s perspective on abortion from a liberation point of view. The women interviewed in this video reveal their experiences with abortion in America during the time in which it was still illegal to obtain one safely, before the Supreme Court decision of 1973 which made it legal. This first-hand perspective on abortion from the women who got one is the first account made in a documentary in support of abortion rights for women in the US. It gives insight into how the women felt, their headspace when pregnant, and their abortion stories. The video also includes the forced sterilization stories of women of color in a time where the discrimination and genocide of people of color in many areas of the US happened through sterilization. These are their intersectional stories to tell and the inequality of it which all comes down to women being allowed to have the choice.

Many thanks to Kianna, Nadia and Gabby for their summaries. More to come!

As a reminder, our electronic resources are available to all current Leeward CC faculty, staff and students. When accessing our resources from off campus, you may be prompted to log in with your UH credentials first. If you have any questions, please reach out to our friendly librarians at lccref@hawaii.edu.

We made a couple of changes to online library tools that we wanted you to be aware of.

We switched the position of the Book a Mobile Device and Library Research Center buttons on the library's home page. We hope that putting the Library Research Center button in the top left position will make it easier for new visitors to our website to find that page, where we give a guided presentation of our various types of information resources and the tools to find useful information from them. 

Desktop and smartphone views of the home page
The change also effects the placement of the button on the mobile view of the library home page.

We also re-labeled the Primo search system's "Collections" feature to "Featured Books". Primo serves as the library's online catalog, and also searches across many of our research databases. Primo's Featured Books function allows us to create curated lists of items grouped by special topics or categories, such as graded readers for ESL students, books in the Hawaiian language, selections from our Best Sellers collection, new books, and e-books and audiobooks on the OverDrive platform.

On most desktop views, the Featured Books button is on the menu bar along the top of the screen. On smaller screens, you might need to click on the three-dot button to view more options.

Primo interface, highlighting the Featured Books button in the menu bar.

Primo Featured Books screen.

We renamed this feature to avoid confusion with our other use of the word "collections" to refer to how we group our books into the General Collection, Reference Collection, Hawaiʻi-Pacific Collection, ESL Collection, and others.

The Featured Books lists might not include every item in a given category, depending on what processes can or can't be automated for those particular items.

Looking for ways to engage your students? Our streaming platform, AVON, offers ways to leverage videos for collaboration, reflection, and assessment of student knowledge.

There are a plethora of films and documentaries available on AVON that are from around the world. This streaming video collection provides access to more than 79,000 videos covering a wide range of diverse topics you can share with your students.

AVON can be found on the Leeward Library homepage. Select the Research menu tab and click Full A-Z Databases List.

 

AVON is available to any Leeward faculty, staff, or currently enrolled student. Creating an account on AVON allows you to clip and bookmark a part of a video to show in class or highlight a portion of a film.

A-Z

Once you've logged into AVON, you'll discover a vast array of videos spanning diverse subjects such as history, anthropology, Black studies, music and performing arts, science and engineering, and more. This variety is sure to pique your interest and enrich your teaching materials.


Use AVON in your classes to see what it can offer your students! If you need any assistance please contact our wonderful reference librarians.

Statista is a global data and business intelligence platform with an extensive collection of statistics, reports, and insights on over 80,000 topics from 22,500 sources in 170 industries.

Statista is a terrific source of information and statistics research, study, and personal interest.

To locate Statista, go to the Research menu tab on the library’s homepage then click the Full A-Z Databases List option to view a list of databases in alphabetical order. 

This database is wonderfully diverse. I love movies, so I searched for the highest-grossing movie of 2023. “Barbie” was at the top of the list making $1.4 billion in revenue! 

Did you know that the success of the movie drove sales up at Mattel, the company that manufactures Barbie?

Please check out this amazing resource available at the Leeward Library today. If you have any questions, please contact one of our very helpful Leeward librarians at lccref@hawaii.edu or at 808-455-0379! We are happy to help!

The Libby app allows faculty, staff and students to access online magazines, eBooks, and audiobooks from our OverDrive collection on their phones and tablets. 

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OverDrive

You can browse thousands of popular fiction and non-fiction ebooks, magazines, and audiobooks on OverDrive! To locate OverDrive, go to the Research menu tab on the library’s homepage then click the Full A-Z Databases List option to view a list of databases in alphabetical order. 

To browse OverDrive, log in using your UH credentials. 

Download Libby for reading on the go!

Once you've found something to borrow, go to the app store on your phone or tablet and download the Libby app. After downloading Libby, add Leeward Community College as your library and log in with your UH credentials. 

If you have a public library card in Hawaiʻi, you can also add Hawaii State Public Library System to access their OverDrive collection!

Please contact us at lcccirc@hawaii.edu if you have any questions. Happy reading!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine the impact of a high-quality, well-chosen video. Fortunately, Leeward CC has access to a wide variety of streaming video content.

Films available from Kanopy
Films available from Kanopy.
Sample films available from Feature Films for Education.
Films available from Feature Films for Education.
Films available from Swank Digital Campus
Films available from Swank Digital Campus.

The table below summarizes our various streaming platforms. Click on the platform title to access the resource. Off-campus users may be prompted to sign in with their UH Login.

PlatformModelContentTitlesNotes
Academic Video Online (AVON)SubscriptionDocumentaries, tutorials, performances, and more.79,240Includes hosted content and Ethnographic Video Online titles.
DocuseekSubscriptionDocumentaries on social and environmental issues.2,182Primarily exclusive content from independent filmmakers.
Ethnographic Video OnlinePerpetualFilms by and for indigenous people and communities.653Content is also included in Academic Video Online (AVON).
Feature Films for EducationSubscriptionFeature films from 20th Century Fox and related labels.693These titles are generally not available on other platforms.
Films on DemandLicensed selectivelyDocumentaries and other educational films.8Titles licensed upon faculty request.
KanopyPay-per-view and licensed selectivelyFeature films, documentaries, foreign films, classics, and more.28,089Library pays a small fee per view; heavily used titles are licensed.
Swank Digital CampusLicensed selectivelyFeature films from Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, and other major studios.23Titles licensed upon faculty request.

Streaming Video DOs and DON'Ts

No matter which platform you use, please keep in mind these general DOs and DON'Ts:

DO 🙂

  • Show films during in-person classes.
  • Share direct links with your students so they may view films on their own.
  • View as many films as you like, as often as you like!

DON'T 🙁

  • Show films outside of class for events (free or paid) without first consulting the library.
  • Stream films over Zoom or other video conferencing services.
  • Share films with persons not affiliated with Leeward CC.

In the coming weeks, we'll give you an overview of each of our major streaming video platforms--their content, how to access them, and the most popular titles. Perhaps you'll discover that perfect video to enrich your coursework, augment your learning, or just enliven your weekend!

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