Former First Lady Nancy Reagan: Her Life, Her Legacy

Posted on March 7, 2016

By Traci Cothran

NANCY REAGAN   (July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016)

The eulogies are pouring in for former first lady Nancy Reagan – an actress, mother, and fierce supporter of her husband, Ronald Reagan.  As her passing happens amidst a contentious presidential race, we are reminded of a time of greater decorum in our democracy.

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Gale’s InfoTrac Collections Add “Related Resources” Feature

Posted on March 4, 2016

By Sara Constantakis, Senior Content Developer, Journal Aggregation, Gale

Beginning March 7th, users of Gale’s InfoTrac periodical collections—like Academic OneFile, General OneFile, and InfoTrac Newsstand—will enjoy exciting new functionality. When viewing an article, the “Related Resources” feature recommends additional content of interest, providing a more dynamic, relevant presentation of related content.

To view recommended content from within the product, users can click the “Related Resources” button at the top of the article and scroll through the top 12 results, located below the citation. When searching via PowerSearch, results will be pulled from all applicable content.

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Flit, Float, Fly Away

Posted on March 3, 2016

By Candy Jones-Guerin

Spring is on the way and we can’t wait to start exploring outside. There are a lot of fun ways to help quench spring fever in your classroom and on March 14th you have the perfect opportunity with ‘National Learn About Butterflies Day’!

Does your school have a butterfly garden? Are there opportunities to watch a butterfly emerge from his chrysalis in your classroom? Do you use butterflies to talk about the life cycle? We have a collection of Gale titles for grade school and middle school classes to help get you going. Take a peek and let us know how you will be integrating these resources and more in your classroom.

Butterflies and Moths, 1st Edition
This book describes and compares the physical characteristics, habitat, behavior, life cycle, diet, and reproduction of these amazing insects.

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Providing the Right Resources for On-the-Go Students: One School’s Story

Posted on March 2, 2016 Kris Jacobson is a teacher/librarian at a busy high school outside of Chicago. With 3,000 students and a campus that recently went 1:1 with Chromebooks, Kris stays busy, but is constantly striving to make the library more useful for patrons. Kris found that helping students conduct research in multiple information … Read more

CLiC Helps Lighten the Load

Posted on March 1, 2016

By Megan McCarthy

When I was little I used to love reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. We had one full set, and I think it was published in 1968. I would write all my papers using those encyclopedias. It wasn’t until high school that it occurred to me the information might be out-of-date. It was the same with textbooks. There were names of students on my pre-owned textbooks that I knew had graduated college. What’s more, those books were heavy. I remember dragging my loaded book bag to and from school. I thought my arms would break. Now, with CLiC, those days are gone.

CLiC (Classroom in Context) is a digital curriculum that pulls its content from Gale’s award-winning In Context databases. In Context is dynamically updated, so the content is always current. Not only are the six CLiC curriculums designed to meet state, national and Common Core standards, they are also endlessly customizable. Teachers can add in videos, podcasts, articles, and even their own materials. And all of this flexibility is available for students on their tablets and laptops. So out-of-date textbooks and encyclopedias are a thing of the past.

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Kids InfoBits Product Update week of 2/22/2016

Posted on February 24, 2016 You’ll see a few new updates and features added to Kids InfoBits starting March 9th. Here is what you’ll find: Are your students struggling with the meaning or definition of words in articles? Kids InfoBits now has easy access to the Merriam Webster Elementary Dictionary within the product. To assist students … Read more

When News Breaks, Library Users Can Stay Informed with Gale’s Periodical Collections

Posted 2/24/2016

By Sara Constantakis, Senior Content Developer, Journal Aggregation, Gale

When news hits the headlines, the flood of information begins immediately. Gale’s InfoTrac collections–like Academic OneFile, General OneFile, and InfoTrac Newsstand–rise above the rest to bring users timely and curated content from the world’s leading magazines, journals, and news sources. When a hot topic is racing around the headlines, InfoTrac’s highly responsive subject indexing quickly connects users with the most up-to-date and relevant information.

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We Love Analytics!

Posted on February 19, 2016

We love our work on the Gale Databases team, as we continuously add informative and engaging new content – this includes keeping up with the latest current events (World History In Context, Global Issues In Context), health news (Science In Context, Health and Wellness Resource Center), business developments (Business Insights), and topics being studied in school (Student Resources In Context, Research In Context, Kids InfoBits), to name just a few.

But we also love finding out how the content is actually used in these databases once we load it – and we look at many metrics, including:

  • Top Searches
  • Top Media
  • Most Popular Articles and Journals
  • Number of Users
  • And many others

Read moreWe Love Analytics!

The Ever-changing State of Literary Criticism

Posted on February 18, 2016

By Larry Trudeau

I was recently reviewing an entry on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations for an upcoming volume of Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism (NCLC), and was surprised—delighted, really—to see that we were including two reviews of the novel from 1861, the year it was published in book form.

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Sending Birthday Wishes to the “Father of our Country”

Posted on February 18, 2016

Did you know that according to the then-used Julian calendar, George Washington’s birthday was actually February 11, 1731?  It wasn’t until Britain and all its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar that his birthday was moved 11 days later to February 22.

The “Father of our Country” was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States (1789-1797) and during that time shaped the course of our country. From the Revolutionary War to the Constitution, George Washington made his mark on history.

Take some time this month to browse Gale’s titles about the life and times of this great American figure and while you are there, let us know how you implement these resources in your classroom!

American Eras: Primary Sources: Development of a Nation (1783-1815), 1st Edition
February 2015
This volume in the student-friendly American Eras: Primary Sources series documents the dramatic period when the federal government and the U.S. Constitution were established. This volume features personal letters, memoirs, laws, sermons, speeches, works of literature, and many other primary source types. Together these sources show the diversity of the American experience.

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