Tara Blair

Tara Blair is a Digital Marketing Specialist for Gale, a Cengage Company. In her spare time, she is a total crime junkie and spends her days listening to podcasts—especially those of the unsolved.

Mastering Workflow: Connecting Learners to Your Library

As digital demands continue to rise, the emphasis on creating a seamless workflow becomes all the more important: eliminating multiple logins, developing efficiencies in how materials are prepared and distributed, and building a collaborative environment with students and peers are all essential to today’s educators. Gale is proud to announce additional authentication options with single … Read more

Introducing: The Dashboard

A new tool has been added to Analytics On Demand. It’s called the dashboard. What is the Dashboard? The Analytics On Demand dashboard gives users the ability to transform patron data and drill down into rich visuals. Best of all, once the three apps needed for the dashboard output are acquired by the library, it’s no … Read more

San Luis Obispo High School Improves College Readiness and More

San Luis Obispo High School (SLOHS) is one of the top-ranking academic high schools in California. According to the school’s website, beyond their core academic program, they provide elective classes to better prepare students for what’s next. Recently, they acquired Gale’s Biography In Context,  a user-friendly portal experience containing context on the world’s most influential people. Here’s … Read more

Celebrate World Oceans Day

| By Debra Kirby |

Did you know that World Oceans Day is celebrated June 8 each year and that it was officially recognized by the United Nations in December of 2008? Or that the Canadian government first proposed the idea at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992?

Each year World Oceans Day events are organized around a different theme, with this year’s focus on “plastic pollution prevention and cleaning the ocean of marine litter.” http://www.worldoceansday.org/

Even if you don’t live near an ocean, or are not planning to participate in an event on June 8, there are many things you can do to make a difference. Since all of Earth’s waterways are connected, what affects your local stream, river, or lake also eventually makes its way to the oceans. Here are a few easy things anyone can do throughout the year:

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Nashville Public Library Named 2017 Library of the Year

Tennessee’s Nashville Public Library (NPL) has been named the 2017 Library of the Year by Library Journal magazine and Gale, a Cengage company. The Library of the Year is a prestigious honor awarded to a library that demonstrates profound service to community, creativity, leadership, and innovation in developing community programs. Nashville Public Library stands out … Read more

Partners in Connecting with Nashville’s Youth


By Allison Barney
Limitless Library Coordinator
Nashville Public Library

At Nashville Public Library (NPL), our story is about more than books. It’s about education, community, and enabling others to thrive. Our award-winning programs allow our entire city to dream, learn, see, do, and become more. Better yet, these programs don’t just happen inside our buildings. We connect with them right in their own communities. In fact, two of our very successful community programs, Limitless Libraries and the Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA), use this model to reach thousands of children and youth through the public schools who might not otherwise have access to library resources.

Read morePartners in Connecting with Nashville’s Youth

Summer Escapes!

Must-Reads for Vacationers Anytime of Year

These titles were featured in May’s Library Journal as must-reads if you are looking for “summer escapes.” Anyone planning vacation reads or just armchair getaways will want to check out our large print editions:

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Mathematics, 2nd Edition Positively Engages Students

This full-color update of the award-winning 2002 A-Z encyclopedia explains concepts, provides a historical overview, and explores careers in the field. Written for middle school/high school students, as well as non-math-major undergraduates, Mathematics contains some 300 entries that cover the basics of algebra, geometry and trigonometry, with the goal of making these topics more accessible and interesting. Readers will see the uses and effects of math in daily life, while short biographies highlight notable mathematicians. Thirty percent of the content is new to this edition, highlighting advances in mathematics since 2000. Mathematics is illustrated with images, equations, tables, and figures, and includes sidebars.

Both the original edition and the new were shaped by expert boards who determined the entry list and reviewed content. Each entry contains a bibliography/suggestions for further reading and cross‐references directing the users to articles of related interest.

See what Library Consultant, Janis Minshull, thinks of the newest edition:

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For Students to the Rescue! Fear Not the Required Readings for High School

| By Nicole Albrecht |

The look in my students’ eyes, when I would pass out the first set of novels for the school year, would convey an array of emotions from fear, apathy, excitement, genuine interest, and, my favorite, rebellion. Introducing a novel to a high school English class can be a teacher’s worst nightmare, but I enjoyed every minute of it because it was a challenge to me. A challenge to change their mind about not only reading in general, but how they see the world after they are finished reading a particular work. I didn’t always feel this way about introducing a novel to my students, in fact, in the beginning of my teaching career, I would lose sleep for several days prior to introducing a novel. I felt this way because I knew how it felt for students to “fear the novel” and I remembered how I felt when my own high school teachers would introduce one.

I grew up with a love for reading—it was a chance to experience life from another perspective, to walk in someone else’s shoes, and upon finishing the story, become a new person with a new way to look at the world. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I started to loathe reading novels and I actually stopped reading altogether during this time.

Read moreFor Students to the Rescue! Fear Not the Required Readings for High School