Gale Helps Cody High School Discover MeL Resources

Posted on April 21, 2016

By Tracey L. Matthews

Some schools acquire Gale resources on a state-wide level, offering broad access to our authoritative resources. But not everyone knows they’re available. Detroit’s (MI) Cody Academy of Public Leadership is one example.

In the course of setting up a mentoring program nearly two years ago with Cody High School’s Academy of Public Leadership, one of the first things we learned was that the staff was unaware they had access to any reference content. Like many other schools in the Detroit school district, their media specialist positions had been eliminated, leaving busy and challenged teachers with no help identifying resources for their students, who not surprisingly relied primarily on Google for their research needs.

Our first service to Cody was to hold a training session with Cody staff to introduce them to the Michigan Electronic Library (MeL), through which they had easy access to a wide variety of reference and periodical databases, including Gale products like Opposing Viewpoints In Context.

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What I Did on My Summer Vacation: A Gale Intern’s Story

by Luiza Lodder

As an English major from Penn State University, I was pleased to work as a content development intern for Gale this summer, managing academic and educational online resources and databases. My goal was to explore publishing and apply my skills and interests. Although I was placed in the Boston office, my supervisor and team were located in Michigan. Yet in spite of working remotely, I felt fully engaged with the work and the team.

Part of my responsibilities included updating Gale literature databases and maintaining content. For example, I input author birthdates and death dates, recent prizes won, and recent developments such as book publications or adaptations. One of Gale’s long-term goals is to make classic works available online to customers; I helped by identifying which works were already public domain and which were still protected by publication rights. Being an international student from Brazil, I enjoyed a bonus experience that was fun for me and uniquely useful to Gale: translating an interview of Brazilian users recorded by Gale market researchers.

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Jumping Into Digital Learning – One Librarian’s Story

Posted on September 3, 2015
Posted by Cenee Precure

Life never stops teaching. Be sure to never stop learning. ~ Michael Josephson

As our high school sat on the cusp of all things Google with shiny new Chromebooks and whispers of Google Classroom drifting through the hallways, the school library was at that place once again…dig in our heels and resist another district technology implementation or dive in and embrace the challenge!

As a relatively new librarian, serving high school faculty, staff, and students for the first time, I knew I had to build relationships, be willing to take some risks, and be bold enough to learn from my mistakes along the way. Thankfully, there were brave teachers that were willing to embark on this journey with me.

With cinnamon rolls in tow, I met with the English teachers during their PLC and presented a quick overview of the TexQuest resources and had a representative from Imagine Easy do an online webinar introducing the Scholar Edition (formerly known as the School Edition of EasyBib). I knew if I could get just one teacher to buy into how these two digital platforms could work together, the paperless research project might actually become more than just a seed of an idea.

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