Looking for a relaxing, creative activity while social distancing? Does anyone in your household like to color? We have some of the best coloring pages around – and they are all FREE!!!

If you go to InfoHawk+ – the University of Iowa Libraries search engine – and search for coloring books, you’ll find you get over 400 results. But, on the left is a tab where you can sort your results by relevance and “full text online” – and voilà – you have a manageable list! The online resource link will take you to  coloring book which you may then save and print! 

We’re pretty much all working from home and wishing we had better office chairs. It’s no surprise that office chairs have patents – but did you know there are patent coloring books? Print a copy of your office chair and color it to be exactly the way you’d like it to be! Use your imagination! Fluorescent colors, smiley faces, cartoon characters – well, you get the idea! Go to “Selected Works of Paulina Borrego” where there is a drop down – “jump to category.” Click on that and select “Patent Coloring Books.” Have fun scrolling through the many collections of patents and get coloring!

You’ll also want to check out the Open Culture website. They have “free coloring books from world-class libraries & museums.” Their list includes coloring books from The Met, New York Public Library, Smithsonian, Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Royal College of Physicians, and SO many more!!

Maybe you and/or your kids are into the outdoors – there are coloring books for you, too!

The US Fish & Wildlife service has coloring books, too. Head to their website, search “coloring books” and you’ll come up with a whole list of available, downloadable pdfs.

More into agriculture? You an access Biosecurity for Birds Coloring Book through InfoHawk+ – find the link to full text and you’ll be ready to download!

Resources: 

University of Iowa Libraries InfoHawk+. Limit search to “library catalogs,” search “coloring books,” narrow search by selecting “full text online” on the left side of the screen.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Homepage.  Search color books. Last updated March 19, 2020.

United States. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. Biosecurity for birds coloring book. 2006. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

Free Coloring Books from World-Class Libraries & Museums: The Met, New York Public Library, Smithsonian & More. Feb. 7, 2017. Open Culture : The best free cultural & educational media on the web.  Date Accessed: March 25, 2020

Need a break from all the usual streaming channels? We have access to online music and videos you can explore and enjoy!

Interested in music and the performing arts? Head over to this Alexander Street website for free access to links for all sorts of music and performing arts! This website has videos of operas, dance (all kinds!), Broadway musicals, jazz music, world music, and, oh, so much more!! If you like music and performing arts of all types – this is an amazing site to get lost in! They also have a section of Smithsonian Global Music for Libraries – this includes books and songs for children. These links are fully searchable by genre, places, artists, film, theater and more! 

Are you into silent films? Alexander Street also has a link for silent films – including The Great Train Robbery. The Great Train Robbery from 1903, is an American silent short western film written, produced, and directed by Edwin S. Porter, a former Edison Studios cameraman. This collection has silent films from Monkey Shines filmed in 1890 to Brandford City v Gainsborough Trinity filmed in 2016.

(Confession time – I may have found some fun steel drum music to listen to while writing this!)

Looking for educational videos and documentaries? Try Kanopy.  This site has everything from the Criterion Collection, Political Documentaries, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, Italian Studies, the Great Courses, and many more! Check out the many, many videos available to watch for free!

Here’s another great website for movies! There is everything available from thrillers, westerns, sci-fi, romance, musicals, documentaries, and more, more, more! Check out the University of Iowa Academic Film Streaming! Hard to imagine you won’t find something there that you haven’t seen, but have always meant to watch!

Looking for academic video streaming?  Swank is another great resource. It includes feature films, documentaries, foreign films, and TV shows!

We want you to stay safe!
So watch our free resources while you are social-distancing and self-isolating!

Guest Blogger: Qianjin (Marina) Zhang

You may be far from the UI campus during the foreseeable future, but we here at the Engineering Library continue to support your study through thousands of online resources! Here are highlights some of our e-resources that you might want to check out!

If you need references and handbooks for mechanical engineering, chemical engineering etc. that help your self-learning, AccessEngineering is the best bet as it has thousands of ebooks, videos and tutorials.

You may know how to access IEEE journals and conference proceedings through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. But do you know that you can also access thousands of ebooks through the same platform? If you’re studying bioengineering, computing & processing, power, energy & industry, robotics & control systems etc., you may want to check out the IEEE-Wiley ebooks and Foundations and Trends ebooks. If you’re studying internet of things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, wearable technology etc., you may want to check out the IEEE/IET ebooks. When you get to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library (hawkid/password required if you do not use VPN), you may search for a topic or browse Books as below.

If you would like to learn computer sciences or electrical engineering, Morgan & Claypool Synthesis ebooks would be worth checking out.

If you’re studying electrical, electronics, computing, control, biomedical and communications technologies, you may want to check out IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) ebooks.

If you’re studying other engineering disciplinaries, no worries. We also have thousands of ebooks available through Springer ebook collection and UI Libraries catalog. If you search a subject/topic in SpringerLink or UI Libraries catalog, you would be able to find more e-resources.

Last but not the least, we would like to thank publishers (Wiley, JOVE, Royal Society, Elsevier, etc.) for offering free access to the parts of their collections that are closely relevant to COVID-19 research, and individuals for sharing a crowdsourced list of online instruction/lab simulation resources.

• Free access to COVID-19 research resources:  Wiley has made more than 5,000 COVID-19-related articles freely available in support of the global efforts in diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. As always, you can access our Wiley Online Library Training hub should you need any tips on the platform
• Free, real-time feed of the latest research and news on COVID-19 from Scitrus, powered by Atypon’s AI-driven personalized discovery application.
• JOVE is offering free access to its videos through June 15th.
• A colleague also shared a crowd-sourced list of online instruction/lab simulation resources for science courses.
• The Royal Society has made special collection that comprises the subject of research findings and data relevant to the coronavirus (nCoV) outbreak.
• 256 textbooks currently on ScienceDirect (Elsevier) are freely available to all active ScienceDirect customers for a period of 90 days. Users accessing ScienceDirect through IP or remote access are able to use these books.  

Stay Safe!