Halloween is a time when stories with mystery and imagination come alive. When we were young and had limited understanding of the world, we might struggle to differentiate between fantasy and reality. Thus, our fears were mostly related to imaginary creatures, mythical scenarios or the dark. The older I get, the more I realize that thrilling mysteries are not based solely on our imaginations, but on things close enough to “haunt” our memories and connected deeply to our personal fears. This is why the HKUST campus legends mostly relate to studies. We take our exam results and learning outcomes seriously: they become the root of our anxiety. I can relate it because I graduated from HKUST too. Remember how people in the Harry Potter series banished their boggarts, which took the form of their worst fear? They shouted “Riddikulus!”.  Thus, we can defeat fear by humor and laughter. If our boggarts are anxiety about our grades and GPA, let’s turn it into something fun and interesting, so it can never dominate our spirits.

Kanopy is a streaming video database the Library subscribes to for you. I knew about it before, but I never really explored it until recently. There's a lot more there than I thought, and it's also much easier to use than I thought! Access to Kanopy is available from a web browser, or from a variety of apps for different platforms.  I use the app on my office PC, on my iPad and on an AppleTV at home. To check it out, you can view our catalog record, or go directly to the Kanopy website. Kanopy is constantly adding new films.  If you want to explore titles in our catalog instead of from the Kanopy's site or apps, you can browse them – over 20,000 film records have been added to PowerSearch!  Of course, Kanopy's website and apps will be the most up-to-date – title lists are always changing. Lots of current films are available, along with many, many awesome older classic films – I love black and white Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant films especially.  World Cinema is well represented - for example, one of my favourites is Akira Kurosawa, whose film Ran is available.