Gale at SLA 2019

|By Heather Hedden |

Gale will have good representation at this year’s SLA (Special Libraries Association) annual conference to be held June 14 – 18 at the Huntington Convention Center in Cleveland, Ohio. Gale will have both an exhibit booth in the INFO-EXPO and an expert speaker on the program.

Gale products exhibited

At its booth, #630, Gale Director of Academic Business, Science & Literature Products Amy Braun and Product Manager Michele LaMeau will showcase engaging Gale products for academic libraries and their students.

Gale Interactive: Chemistry and Gale Interactive: Human Anatomy both comprise interactive activities and visualizations. Both products are aimed at general undergraduate and science academic libraries, but Gale Interactive: Human Anatomy is also appropriate for medical libraries.

• Gale Interactive: Chemistry contains 155 activities designed specifically for first- and second-year college students, helping them to visualize complex concepts. Using both a guided and an investigative approach, the resource empowers students to stick with this difficult subject matter. In addition to introductory and general chemistry activities, the resource has 48 3D organic chemistry reactions.
• Gale Interactive: Human Anatomy (2019 Ed Tech “Cool Tool” Finalist) encompasses 125 activities designed to help students visualize the relationships between complex anatomical structures. Its engaging 3D interactive models allow students to go beyond rote memorization of parts, demonstrating instead how each piece connects to create the whole.

Gale small business and entrepreneurship products guide business students and aspiring entrepreneurs in all majors in the process of starting and growing a business. 

• Gale Small Business Builder helps aspiring entrepreneurs and business students conceptualize and plan a new venture. With built-in business theory (like Lean Canvas) and a guided approach, Gale Small Business Builder offers step-by-step guidance for starting a business or nonprofit.
• DemographicsNow connects users with actionable demographic, company, and residential data in targeted geographic locations to support market research and business planning. It helps aspiring entrepreneurs hone in on a target market, getting directly to the customers they need to build success.
• Small Business Resource Center is a comprehensive database that covers all aspects of starting and operating a business, including accounting, finance, human resources, management, marketing, tax, and more. It combines authoritative periodical and reference content to support prospective and current entrepreneurs.
• Gale LegalForms offers a wide selection of essential state-specific (and multi-state) legal forms that may be customized for the most common legal procedures, including real estate contracts, wills, pre-marital agreements, bankruptcy, divorce, landlord-tenant agreements, and more.

The exhibits are open Sunday, June 16, 12:00 pm–7:15 pm; Monday, June 17, 10:30 am–3:00 pm; and Tuesday, June 18, 10:00 am–1:30 pm. Exhibit-only passes are available.

Gale presenter sessions

Building Gale research and instructional products involves integrating various digital assets and indexing content items with subjects from controlled vocabularies. As a senior vocabulary editor at Gale who updates these subjects, I have developed skills and knowledge in controlled vocabulary/taxonomy development, which I am pleased to share as a speaker at SLA. I’ve spoken at SLA in the past, but this is the first time again in three years, and I am excited to be giving two presentations this time.

I will be teaching the full-day, pre-conference continuing education course “Taxonomy Design & Creation Workshop“ on Saturday, June 15, 8:00 am – 4:00 pm. It’s not just about taxonomies, but also discusses thesauri and other kinds of controlled vocabularies, which librarians sometimes need to build to aid search/browse and retrieval of special collections. This pre-conference workshop has a separate registration for the conference, and it is not required to attend the rest of the conference. Walk-in registrations are welcome.

For those who have already started creating a taxonomy or thesaurus but have found it growing too big to manage in Excel, I will be co-presenting an educational session, “Taxonomy Tools and Tool Evaluation,” on Tuesday, June 18, 2019, 1:30 pm – 2:30 pm. I will be presenting the first half, an overview of software for managing and editing taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, etc., and my co-presenter, Marti Heyman, Executive Director of Metadata Strategy & Operations at OCLC, will speak about how to evaluate the software.

I am looking forward to SLA and meeting Gale customers there.

Boots