Academic

The Woman Behind National Women’s History Month

Our understanding of history shapes the way we see the world and helps us define who we are as individuals. When Molly Murphy MacGregor was asked to define the women’s movement by one of her high school students in 1972 her search for an answer not only redefined her view of the world but helped redefine the … Read more

Raise Your Hand If You Want to Know More About Usage, Part II

By Scott Steward

Welcome back to the Gale Technical Solutions blog series!

This is part two in a two part series.

In my last issue (usage part l), I focused on Gale’s definition of the usage metrics we report and how they are counted.  If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here: http://blog.gale.com/raise-your-hand-if-you-want-to-know-more-about-usage/.

For this issue, I will be continuing my discussion about usage, focusing on the factors that affect usage such as discovery services, LMS, openURL and direct links.

Read moreRaise Your Hand If You Want to Know More About Usage, Part II

New Professional Development Collections from Solution Tree

Gale recently partnered with Solution Tree, a premier provider of professional development resources, that strives to increase student achievement and ensure that every child in every school gets the world-class education he or she deserves. Thanks to this partnership, instructors and administrators can better enhance their professional development eBook collection to further meet strategic goals. … Read more

Raise Your Hand If You Want to Know More About Usage, Part I

By Scott Steward The topic I want to discuss is Usage, but since usage is such a broad topic, I will break it up into two posts. In Part I, I will be focusing on some usage basics; what metrics Gale reports and how they are counted. The next blog, Part II, I will focus on … Read more

The ACLU’s role in Brown v. Board of Education

During Black History Month, we remember monumental events that have profoundly changed the United States and impacted the lives of many Americans. One key event in American history is the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. In this Supreme Court case, public schools were ordered desegregated in a unanimous verdict. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) played an important role in Brown v. Board of Education, ensuring that “separate but equal” would no longer apply to educational facilities. Though public education was not fully desegregated by the decision, it began a series of legal victories for the burgeoning civil rights movement and defined constitutional support for racial equality.

Read moreThe ACLU’s role in Brown v. Board of Education

A Literary Un-Valentine’s Day

Every Valentine’s Day we are bombarded with idealized images of true love and passion, and for the unlucky in love, the holiday can be difficult to stomach. In the spirit of demonstrating that matters could be worse, we offer two literary anti-love-scenes, taken from the digital pages of Literature Criticism Online. Consider the plight of … Read more

Gender: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies: Highly Recommended

Support researchers in the study of gender with Gender: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies. By employing literature, film, art, history, and other disciplines, Gender fosters critical thought in gender and sexuality. Highlighting queer, women’s, and men’s studies, Gender: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies provides researchers with a highly recommended resource in the study of gender.

Take a peak at what a reviewer had to say:

Read more Gender: Sources, Perspectives, and Methodologies: Highly Recommended

7 Primary Source Documents Related to Immigration and the ACLU

Since its inception the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has taken part in some of the most contentious legal battles in American history. The ACLU has once again become a central figure in a contentious legal battle following their objections to the recent Executive Order restricting immigration from 7 countries. The ACLU has a long history of fighting restrictions on immigration they deem in violation of civil liberties. The documents below found in the American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990 are several examples of the ACLU’s past involvement in issues surrounding immigration.

Read more7 Primary Source Documents Related to Immigration and the ACLU

Bridging the Gap Between Quantitative and Qualitative Research in Digital Newspaper Archives

by Thomas Smits on DIGITAL HUMANITIES NOW Since the early 2000s, humanities 3.0, as Rens Bod has called it, was posited as being able to discover new patterns, mostly over long periods of time, that were overlooked by traditional qualitative approaches. A study by a team of academics led by Professor Nello Christianini of the University of … Read more

Alternative Facts, Fake News, and Digital Literacy

By Traci Cothran

There was a time when we didn’t need to define what a fact was – or rather, we all understood that it meant the same thing. It was a fact – it was the truth; the rest was fiction or opinion. There were clear, credible sources, and there were those that weren’t. Now students, teachers, and librarians (as well as the rest of the American populous) must grapple with distinguishing fact, fake news, and “alternative facts” on a near-constant basis. While the Internet gives us a plethora of easy-to-access information, it’s up to us to discern what is factual and what is not.

To do that, we need to start asking hard questions of everything we read and hear – such as:

  • Where did that Facebook “news” post originate?
  • Is this news or a “newsvertisement?”
  • Are these statistics or this sound bite taken out of context to distort their meaning?
  • Who penned this article? Do they have a specific agenda that influences their writing?
  • Who created this website and how are they getting paid for their content?
  • When you reverse-search the image used in the article, do you find different source content?

Read moreAlternative Facts, Fake News, and Digital Literacy