Research In Context Meets the Needs of Middle Grade Students

“Teaching middle school is an adventure not a job,” says author and educator, Angela K. Bennett. There’s no doubt grades 6 to 8 are among the most important for young teens and pre-teens to develop learning skills to launch them into high school and beyond. And until now, resources to support an integrated learning adventure have been few and far between, making teaching and supporting learning for this curious group a challenge. But the tide is turning with a new highly-visual resource featuring authoritative content that’s been designed specifically for middle school learners.

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Content Updates for Gale’s In Context (week ending 10/9/2015)

Posted on October 8, 2015

New content has been added and existing content updated in a number of Gale’s In Context products.

Biography In Context
New homepage spotlights have been posted that include the “hotspot” feature. This feature allows users to hover over portions of an image on the home page enabling a pop-up window to appear with fast facts about the topic or links to additional content.

Spotlights for October are:

Read moreContent Updates for Gale’s In Context (week ending 10/9/2015)

Content Updates for Kids InfoBits (week ending 10/9/2015)

Posted on October 8, 2015 New “infobits” have been added to the homepage for October. Categories and subjects covered include: People: Halloween Technology: iPod revealed in 2001 Social Studies: Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day in Canada Plants: Rose as National Flower Science: First Motion Picture Arts: Landscape Painting Animals: Turkeys    Air Jordan 1 Retro … Read more

TEL & Career Transitions: Connecting People with Jobs

By Steven Hicks and Kim Martin

For job seekers, libraries play a crucial role in career discovery, development, and overall assistance. In fact, almost one quarter of library visitors are there to look or apply for a job, according to the Pew Research Center. 1. To further solidify the library’s role as a hub for employment resources, in July, 2014 President Obama signed into law the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, identifying public libraries as potential partners of the American Job Center network, and acknowledging libraries’ ability to provide an expansive array of job search services.

Career Transitions, an online resource from Gale, assists users with career exploration and offers a complete, personalized and guided experience from assessing strengths and interests, to finding new career opportunities, to ultimately completing professional resumes and improving the chances of landing jobs.

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Gale Technical Solutions: Organizing Electronic Resource Pages

By Scott Steward

Let’s talk about some best practices for organizing electronic resource pages.

It doesn’t matter if you are an academic, K12, public, or special library; if you boil down what we do to its simplest definition, our primary goal is to connect people to information.

Our users are already using tools like Google and Bing in their everyday lives to find information.  E.g. Who makes the best cup of coffee? What is the cheapest flight to Las Vegas? What is the carrying weight of a swallow? 

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Educators: Here’s a Fun Way to Encourage Critical Thinking and Research Skills!

Posted on 9/28/15

By Traci J. Cothran

Looking for a great way to engage students, where they can research a topic of their choice and present their findings in a format (including digital!) that fits their skillset?  The National History Day competition does just that, by providing students with a broad annual theme within which they’ll select their own subject; encouraging them to research, use, and document primary sources related to their chosen subject; then presenting their findings by creating an exhibit, paper, performance, website or documentary.

Read moreEducators: Here’s a Fun Way to Encourage Critical Thinking and Research Skills!

Content Updates for Gale’s In Context (week ending 9/25/2015)

Posted on September 24, 2015

New content has been added and existing content has been updated in a number of Gale’s In Context products.

Biography In Context

New portals were launched for Biography In Context this week. They include:

  • Popular MMA fighter Ronda Rousey
  • Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia
  • Prime Minister of Thailand Prayut Chan-o-cha
  • Late poets Lucille Clifton and Denise Levertov

Updates have been made for content reflecting the ousting of Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot, the retirement of Floyd Mayweather, Jr., and the recent passing of Moses Malone.

Narrative content has been added for:

Contemporary Black Biography, Volumes 125 and 126 which covers 110 biographies across the 2 volumes. Some of the individuals covered include:

  • Jeh Hohnson U.S. Homeland Security head
  • Somali-American runner Abdi Abdirahman
  • American ballet dancer Misty Copeland
  • British actor David Oyelowo
  • Zimbabwean author NoViolet Buluwayo
  • Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Read moreContent Updates for Gale’s In Context (week ending 9/25/2015)

2015 TEAMS Award Announced and the Winners Are….

2015 TEAMS Awards

Posted on September 18, 2015

Another TEAMS Award is in the books! This year’s voting committee had amazing applications to review and discuss – from a school community garden putting a new spin on “farm to table”, to a 3D gallery walk featuring student artwork and videos, to a social action research fair with fundraising muscle – and all displayed exciting, creative ways in which teachers and media specialists are working together to promote learning and student achievement.

This year’s big winners include:

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Life Coach, Anyone? Self-Guided, Online Support for Better Living

Life and Career Skills eBooks for young adults

Achieving personal and professional excellence doesn’t “just happen” for most people. Success typically results from persistence and guidance.  For some, turning to a life coach is useful – receiving personal assistance with decision-making and skills acquisition. But with rates averaging $100 to $300 per hour, that service is out of reach for most young adults.

But hiring a professional isn’t the only path. With new resources from Gale, those eager for coaching can find help at the library.  (In fact, at YOUR library!)

Read moreLife Coach, Anyone? Self-Guided, Online Support for Better Living

Gale Technical Solutions: Branding

By Scott Steward

Welcome back to the Gale Technical Solutions blog series!

I thought it would be good to start with some of the basics.  Today, I will be discussing Branding.

Now when I say branding, I’m not talking about the Gale brand;  I’m talking about your library’s brand within your Gale products.  Did you know all Gale products have dedicated space reserved in the interface for your library’s branding?   In this reserved area we can display text, an image, or some custom code (Javascript, PHP, HTML, jQuery, etc).

Read moreGale Technical Solutions: Branding