Gale’s In Context Just Keeps Getting Better!

Posted on September 3, 2015

There is more exciting news for our fans of Gale’s In Context suite. Recent enhancements rolled-out this week make it even easier for students and teachers to quickly access, use, and share content for homework and class assignments. Take a look at what’s new:

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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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Grow Your Nonfiction Collection with Britannica Digital Learning Titles

Posted on September 2, 2015

Easy to search and highly visual nonfiction titles from Britannica Digital Learning can be a resource for your libraries and classrooms to help meet the education research needs for students of all ages. Available on Gale’s award-winning GVRL platform, students can take advantage of popular tools like automatic citation generation highlighting, annotation and more.

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Driving Electronic Content Discovery and Usage: Collaboration – Part 1

Posted on August 31, 2015
Posted by Jan Snyder and Jennifer Maurer

As librarians, we feel privileged to have a very rich collection of Gale databases and eBooks at our fingertips to use with students and staff, at zero cost to us, through the Oregon State Library’s Statewide Database Licensing Program. This allows for statewide access to a wide range of vetted information, on unlimited topics, for use by our patrons. These same databases are available at K-16 throughout Oregon, as well as at public libraries, for use by all state residents. In talking with librarian friends across the country, we know that we enjoy a benefit not available in many states.

Funding for the statewide databases comes from a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant.  Another grant project was initiated some 15 years ago, when members of the Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL) and Oregon State Library staff shared concerns about access to information literacy resources for students and teachers, as the number of licensed school librarians employed across the state declined. OASL applied for a LSTA grant from the State Library to create OSLIS, or the Oregon School Library Information System, and that has become a continuing statewide project. In addition to offering information literacy resources and citation generators in MLA and APA formats, OSLIS serves as the K-12 access point for the statewide databases.

Having statewide central access to the databases provides consistency for students as they move from elementary to middle school and then high school. It also means that students and educators served by school library staff who are not familiar with how to link directly to databases still have access to statewide resources.

Read moreDriving Electronic Content Discovery and Usage: Collaboration – Part 1

Gale Technical Solutions: Custom Solutions for Your Library

By. Scott Steward

Gale, a part of Cengage Learning understands that each library has its own set of unique needs, and what works for one library may not work for another.  We know that in many cases the “one size fits all” approach to implementation is a compromise to what is just good enough. Instead of making you settle for what is just good enough, Gale wants you and your users to have the best possible experience using our products, and sometimes that requires a custom solution.

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Content Updates for Gale’s In Context (week of 8/24/2015)

Posted on August 27, 2015

New content and resources have been added to one of your favorite In Context databases. See what’s new!

Global Issues in Context

Two new portals were launched: Al-Shabab and MERS (Middle East Repository Syndrome in addition to 125 portal pages being updated in the last two weeks. Some of the topics included in the updates are:

Read moreContent Updates for Gale’s In Context (week of 8/24/2015)

Content Updates for Kids InfoBits (week of 8/24/2015)

Posted on August 27, 2015

Take a look at the latest content that has been added to Kids InfoBits:

  • The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia has increased its content with the addition of Quarterly updates.
  • Under the category of Fish, six new entries have been made include Angelfish, Mollie, and the Mullet.
  • New homepage snippets (InfoBits) have been added for September including:
    • Museums feature in the Arts category
    • Back to School in the People category
    • Labor Day, which is September 7, in the Social Studies category
    • Read-A-New-Book-Month which is in September will be featured in the Literature category
    • Football is featured in the Sports category
  • Over 450 entries have been updated, with many of them focusing on marine life, contemporary figures and countries. Some of these that you’ll see are:

Read moreContent Updates for Kids InfoBits (week of 8/24/2015)

New Titles Added to the InfoTrac Collections in July 2015

The titles below have been recently added and can be located in the product using Basic or Advanced Search forms. Titles can be found via Browse Publications within two weeks. For complete coverage information please see the product title lists.

Academic OneFile

  • Acta Societatis Botanicorum Poloniae (Polskie Towarzystwo Botaniczne) 0001-6977 Peer-reviewed
  • Chilean Journal of Agricultural Research (Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias) 0718-5820 Peer-reviewed
  • East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (International Society for the History of East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine (EASTM)) 1562-918X Peer-reviewed
  • Journal of Laser Micro Nanoengineering (Japan Laser Processing Society) 1880-0688 Peer-reviewed
  • Onomazein (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Facultad de Letras) 0717-1285 Peer-reviewed
  • Pure and Applied Chemistry (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) 0033-4545 Peer-reviewed
  • Revista Digital de Biblioteconomica e Ciencia da Informacao (Universidade Estadual de Campinas. Sistema de Bibliotecas)   Peer-reviewed
  • Standards in Genomic Sciences (BioMed Central Ltd.) 1944-3277 Peer-reviewed
  • World Organisation, Labour & Globalisation (Pluto Journals) 1745-641X Peer-reviewed

Read moreNew Titles Added to the InfoTrac Collections in July 2015