What makes working for National Geographic a fulfilling experience and why should you be excited to add National Geographic Virtual Library to your collection? Find out straight from the source. In a continuation of our interview with the Geographic, we had the pleasure of interviewing Anne Marie Houppert.
Read morePartner Interview: Anne Marie Houppert of the National Geographic Society
Gale is continually updating and adding new content to our In Context products, ensuring that they offer timely, authoritative, useful information. The items below were added or updated during the week of October 6, 2014.
Read moreProduct Updates: New In Context content for 10/06/14
By Bethany Dotson
My name is Bethany Dotson, and I’m a market development manager here at Gale – and, for today, your featured guest blogger on Nineteenth-Century Nitty Gritty. My background is in English and Spanish literature, and I love all things Victorian.
I have recently discovered the joys of audiobooks on my commute—with the complication that the four miles I drive to work lends itself to only a few pages at a time. For the last few weeks, then, I have been enjoying (I can’t say devouring at this pace) Simon Winchester’s The Map That Changed the World: William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology, about—well, about the birth of modern geology.
By Alice Eng
[alert-info]Recently, we issued a challenge to all those who planned to attend the Charleston Conference this November. Answer a question in 1,000 to 1,500 words, and when a travel scholarship to attend the 2014 conference. While, we received many thoughtful responses, our far-and-above favorite came from Alice Eng, Electronic Resources Librarian at the University of North Florida. This is her winning essay in response to our question: “What is the best way for library resources to be integrated into the university or college curriculum, and how, in your opinion, could this be achieved?”[/alert-info]
Read moreIntegrating Library Resources into the College Classroom
Gale is continually updating and adding new content to our In Context products, ensuring that they offer timely, authoritative, useful information. The items below were added or updated during the week of September 29, 2014.
Read moreProduct Updates: New In Context content for 09/29/14
By Frank Menchaca
Libraries, it seems, are under attack everywhere. Schools are eliminating librarians. College libraries receive less than three cents of every dollar spent on higher education. Marketing guru Seth Godin— and a chorus of others—has questioned the relevance of libraries in particularly stinging terms.
But there’s good news too. Ninety-five percent of Americans believe that public libraries play an important role in helping people live more successful lives. Students who visit their college libraries even once a semester are much more likely to return to school the following semester than those who do not. According to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, “the vast majority of readers aged 16-29 have read a print book in the last year.” And 60 percent of Americans under the age of 30 have used a library within the last 12 months.
The message is clear. Libraries—whether academic, municipal, or special purpose—are essential to the health, wealth, and education of the communities they serve. There’s no doubt libraries are challenged by funding cuts and bad press or that they need to beef up their marketing efforts, but the rumors of their death have been greatly exaggerated.
A look at a current news item through the lens of different titles available on GVRL.
By Michelle Eickmeyer
Some amazing women did some amazing things this week. And sadly, some horrible things were said about and done to some amazing women this week as well.
This post is going to be a slightly different format than usual. Hopefully you’ll find the information just as useful.
Here are five titles that look at women from different perspectives:
By Kate I.
When I landed on the USC campus as a freshman in the fall of 1996, the only thing I knew I needed to do for sure was find a work-study job. For fear of waiting too long and losing out, I took the very first job I was offered — a $5.25 an hour job at a campus library. USC has a multitude of libraries, and that fall was the year a brand new library opened its doors…it was beautiful, bright, beckoning, a center of social activity, open 24 hours, bays of gleaming computers, print stations, fully staffed on site technical support, and friendly, cheerful librarians to help you maneuver the clearly labeled areas of the large building. Leavy Library.
Alas, my job was not at Leavy, it was in the much older, marble entombed, silent and still Doheny Library. With narrow stacks, a terrifying cage where the dissertations were kept, and a “periodicals” section with the most amazing ceiling, Doheny was one of the older buildings on campus and the opposite of a social space, even with the Cinema Library in the basement that allowed students to watch movies on Beta, VHS and laser-disc to their hearts’ content. The lighting was dim, the stacks were dusty, and getting lost was a nightly occurrence. There was no social hour, it was a haven for grad students and for anyone looking to disappear into their work for a little while.
By Farah F.
I was listening to an interview on NPR with Regina Spektor one summer, where she stated that libraries are sort of a level playing field for everyone. Everyone deserves the opportunity to learn, to enjoy books and film, music, and research. Libraries help keep our communities educated, and allow these resources to ALL.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have a decent internet connection. Our house was on 5 acres of land. But we were required to use the internet for our projects in school. Needless to say, the library helped me with this. Even in college, I would look up my grades, pay my tuition, and more, at the library if I was back home for break.
Read moreLibraries Provide Educational (and Creative) Resources for All
By Aaron C.
I was in my 2nd year at GMI / EMI which is a school that had a calendar of 3 month CO-OP engagement, 3 months of schooling, 3 months CO-OP, and 3 months of schooling as a 5 year program. My CO-OP sponsor was in California and my family was in Michigan. I tried to lobby for a new CO-OP sponsor with the school but was told that in order to change sponsors I would need to find my own. I walked out of that office and straight to the library.
During the library introduction at the beginning of the semester I remembered them showing us the various company registries and how you could find any company in them. I spent hours pouring over the listings and creating a mailing list of the companies that worked in automation which is not only what I wanted to do but it applied to my degree program.