Meet Our New GVRL Specialist

| By Nicole Albrecht |

Hi everyone! My name is Nicole Albrecht and I am Gale’s new GVRL Specialist. I am sure you are asking yourself, “What exactly is a GVRL Specialist?” Well, before I explain my role, what I have created recently, and how I plan to help in the future, let me tell you about myself.

I was born and raised in the lovely state of Michigan and currently live in the Metro Detroit area. I always knew I was going to be a teacher, so after high school I attended Western Michigan University. (Go Broncos!) My love for reading and learning about the past lead me to choose Western’s Education program in Secondary Education with a major in English and History. After graduation I decided to take a leap of faith and go out of state to teach. I taught World History in beautiful, but very rural North Carolina for two years before moving back home to Michigan. Teaching jobs were hard to find when I came home, so I took a position at a charter high school in inner city Detroit. It was in this urban environment that I thrived and settled in to teach for the next four years. As you can imagine, teaching in the inner city wasn’t easy or pretty at times, but something about the kids and their challenges made me a better teacher. During my time in Detroit, I also graduated with my Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction with a focus in Adolescent Literacy. At the end of my 6th year of teaching, I felt it was time to search new horizons and I came upon an opportunity to teach at the college level for a technical institution. It was an amazing chance to teach high school students who were dual enrolled for their diploma and an associate’s degree. I taught there for two years before finding this wonderful opportunity, here at Gale, to step out of the classroom and utilize my skills in a different manner.

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You Empower Us! What Empowers You? Let Us Know During National Library Week and You Could…

Win a free T-shirt! Be featured on our social media pages! Most importantly, let everyone know what empowers you. All of this and more happens when Gale kicks off National Library Week 2017! To celebrate, we want to spark a conversation where librarians from coast to coast share what they’re empowered by. As a librarian, you … Read more

National Autism Awareness Month

| By Traci Cothran |

Sesame Street’s first new puppet in a decade debuts this month; her name is Julia, she’s a cutie-pie, and she has Autism.  To say this is a huge moment for the Autism community is a gross understatement, as kids on the spectrum struggle every day to find acceptance and friendship, and Sesame Street is now providing a way for young children to grow up understanding this disorder better and accepting kids who have it.  Like many others parents of children on the spectrum, I was thrilled (and a little choked up) watching the “60 Minutes” segment about Julia and all the research and thoughtfulness Sesame Street put into the creation of this character.

And, as a parent, I’m always trying to keep current on new trends, therapies, and research on Autism.  It can be overwhelming, as it seems there’s less defined about Autism than is known.  This is where I love our Gale resources.  We have fantastic information on the topic in our eBooks on GVRL, including:

Autism, 1st Edition
Series Name: Introducing Issues with Opposing Viewpoints
Lauri S. Scherer
Greenhaven Publishing

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Product Update: New Titles to InfoTrac

New Titles Added to the InfoTrac Collections in March 2017 The titles below have been recently added and can be located in the product using Basic or Advanced Search forms. Titles can be found via Browse Publications within two weeks. For complete coverage information please see the product title lists. Academic OneFile Collections:  A Journal … Read more

A Remarkable Review for Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History

History is not just a list of dates and events. But history taught well is vibrant, relevant, and engaging. And nothing brings history to life like primary sources that give students a close-up look at history as it unfolded.

Gale and Smithsonian have partnered to deliver an online resource that includes unique and seminal primary sources, including documents, maps, historical objects, and other materials from the museums and archives from the collections of the Smithsonian and from Gale’s leading digital collections: Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History.

Designed for use by both teachers and librarians, this resource from Gale supports core and Advanced Placement U.S. history programs. Primary source images are hand-curated by scholars at the Smithsonian – experts who have a unique knowledge of U.S. history as seen through the Smithsonian’s valuable collections and shaped for the school curriculum by an advisory board of teachers.

See how a reviewer feels about the collection of Primary Sources:

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The Greatest Resistance Stories

| By Debra Kirby |

In honor of Holocaust Month, which is observed in the United States in April, I’m sharing a few of my current reads and older favorites related to World War II resistance groups and individuals. With a background like mine—a lifelong interest in World War II history, French and Polish grandparents, and a tendency toward activism—stories about WWII resistance in Europe have long attracted my interest. Below are a few of my current and longtime favorites, as well as recommendations on which Gale databases you can visit to learn more about WWII resistance.

 Recent Nonfiction Favorites:

The Resistance, 1940: An Anthology of Writings from the French Underground translated and annotated by Charles B. Potter (2016). This fascinating first person accounting of four French Resistance fighters, including national heroes Jean Moulin and Germaine Tillion, would make an excellent primary source student resource.

The Zoo Keeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman (2007) chronicles the experiences of Polish citizens Antonina and Jan Zabinski and their sheltering of Jews on the grounds of the Warsaw Zoo. A movie based on the book and starring Jessica Chastain premiered in Warsaw in early March.

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Irish Short Fiction: A Saint Patrick’s Day Review

| By Eric Bargeron, Layman Poupard Publishing |

This Saint Patrick’s day, readers of Literature Criticism Online can distinguish themselves from the masses by eschewing green beer and shamrock kitsch, and contemplating instead the many contributions of Ireland to the world of literature. As critic Terence Brown notes in Short Story Criticism, volume 226, “it is scarcely a disputable fact of literary history that Irish prose fiction writers have been drawn to the short story form and have indeed excelled in it.” That volume, which is devoted entirely to Irish writers, includes a lengthy entry on James Joyce. His stories, all of which are contained in the collection Dubliners, are widely considered to be among the best in the English language. Joyce himself was fairly convinced of the importance of the book, even before its publication, as Morris Beja writes in his essay “One Good Look at Themselves”:

During their dispute over the problems in bringing out an edition of Dubliners, James Joyce wrote the publisher Grant Richards that ‘I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.’

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One Shining Moment in Space and Time

| By Debra Kirby |

While a history major in college, one of my classes was a one-on-one tutorial on the history of science.  During one session my patient professor was able to explain Einstein’s special relativity theory so that I was truly able to understand it—for one bright shining moment. I could almost feel my brain working! It was beautiful! Sorry to say, I was never again able to recapture that moment in quite the same way, despite later taking a “Physics for Poets” class and going through quite the hero worship phase, which included reading every book on Einstein I was able to purchase or borrow. I even hung a poster of him in my bedroom. Because my history focus was on World War II, I found Einstein biographies especially fascinating, since much of his life was intertwined with and influenced by that war.  In honor of Einstein’s birthday today, March 14, I recently visited Gale’s Science In Context to reacquaint myself with the great physicist. Here are just a few of the interesting facts I found:

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Teaching Research Made Easy with Gale

| By Lori Warren | Located in Chattanooga, the STEM School opened in the Summer of 2012 on the Chattanooga State Community College Campus. The high school’s name stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. All students enrolled: receive an iPad, participate in Project Based Learning Units, and pursue a STEM focused curriculum. As their … Read more

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd Edition: One of the Best Reference Titles of 2016

Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, 2nd ed., has been named to Library Journal‘s “Best Reference Titles of 2016” list. Released annually and “compiled by a group of Library Journal’s top reference reviewers and editors” the list serves as “a roundup of the best databases reviewed in Library Journal this past year.” The resoundingly positive review published earlier … Read more