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).
Maybe you received private funding or a grant to provide a resource to your users, we can display a message about it. Or maybe you receive access to Gale products from your state, and your library subscribes to some Gale products privately. We can display your branding on your private subscriptions and the state’s branding on the ones they provide.
Whatever your situation, we can provide a solution.
To give you some ideas of what is possible, let’s look at some examples:
In my first example, we added the University of Maine’s logo into the upper left corner of GVRL: Maine GVRL. The logo will show up on every page within GVRL, whether it is a search page, result page or an eBook.
In my second example, we branded Academic OneFile with the Utah Education Network logo: Academic OneFile. This option puts the logo in a high contrast area on the search page, and then is in the upper left corner for all other pages in Academic OneFile.
In my third example, we are branding General OneFile with the logo for the Michigan eLibrary on the results page: General OneFile. This option puts the logo in a prominent location on the results page, and then is in the upper left corner for all other pages in General OneFile.
In my fourth example, we are showing a splash page before the user goes into ChiltonLibrary.com: Splash Page. This option makes sure the user sees your branding.
In all of the examples above, branding was used for attribution, but it can be used for much more.
Do you want to survey your users? We can add a custom survey into your Gale products allowing you to collect the needed information.
Does your library have an ask a librarian service? Add it to your Gale products (http://galesupport.com/lamp/examples/aal_branding.png).
The possibilities for what can be added into your Gale products is near limitless. Contact us today to talk about a custom solution we can do for you.
In the next post, I will talk about electronic resource organization15 and best practices to connect your users to the information they need.
Stay tuned to the tech channel!
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About the Author
Scott is a problem solver. He is equally comfortable writing code, creating graphics, swinging a hammer or turning a wrench. He has an Associate degree in Architecture from Washtenaw Community College and a B.S. In Computer Science from Baker college.
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