| By Gale Staff |
Academic texts are necessary for learning and research, but these materials cost the average American university student more than $1,000 annually. It’s no surprise that these supplemental expenses place additional stress on students—first-generation students and students of color, in particular.
On top of that, physical textbooks quickly become outdated. Once a new edition gets released, a prized $200 textbook can suddenly become worthless. It’s costly for students, and time-consuming for staff and faculty to constantly vet and update these resources.
We’re here to help. Gale eBooks is a campus-wide offering housed in your school library that simplifies, streamlines, and saves money. When students get to focus on their education and spend less time worrying about finances, it’s a win for the entire campus. Let’s take a look at the many advantages of our eBook offerings and award-winning platform.
Instant Title Accessibility
Gale eBooks is a dynamic and flexible resource that will benefit your entire university community. When your campus purchases titles from Gale eBooks, the library owns them perpetually, and users receive unlimited and simultaneous digital access. This eliminates wait time for in-demand titles, processing and postage for interlibrary loans, and the danger of lost or late books.
Purchasing campus-wide access means that instead of toting heavy course materials around campus, digital titles are available to students and faculty from their digital devices—including mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. Plus, instant access to digital academic titles saves valuable time for distance, hybrid, and non-traditional learners who would otherwise need to commute to the bookstore or library.
Prioritize Equity
University undergraduate demographics are changing, and a majority (56%) are first-generation students. This population is more likely to come from minority or low-income backgrounds, and the hidden costs of higher education (such as technology, food, and, of course, textbooks) can be staggering.
Investing in a Gale eBooks subscription reduces student financial barriers to high-quality resources and ultimately helps advance your university’s equity goals by removing potential obstacles to learning.
Support Individual Learning Needs
In addition to removing financial barriers, the built-in accessibility features of Gale eBooks support diverse learning styles. From eBooks to archives to databases, every Gale resource includes valuable learning tools for individual academic needs.
These include options to enlarge text or change fonts, dozens of translation options, and built-in text-to-speech technology. This not only ensures accessibility for students with learning disabilities, it also anticipates a growing preference for text-to-speech to increase focus and productivity.
Our resources are accessible to all learners regardless of background or learning style. With instant access via Gale’s resources, nontraditional and distance learners can download eBooks to a personal device and study when and where the opportunity presents itself without having to carry course books with them at all times.
Integrate Curated Titles to the Classroom
Faculty can easily integrate these works into the classroom across a wide range of subject areas. Our eBook offerings span in-demand disciplines, including STEM research, nursing and allied health, business, and women’s studies. Gale eBooks allows faculty to rely on our featured title lists for their course planning, with confidence that the works will be immediately available to all students so no one falls behind waiting for a course book at the start of the semester.
Gale eBooks even offers a curated title list highlighting digital resources that feature diverse voices and exciting new perspectives. Search by subject area and discover powerful titles such as Food Insecurity: A Reference Handbook, The Power of Latino Leadership: Culture, Inclusion, and Contribution, or Forgotten African American Firsts: An Encyclopedia of Pioneering History.
Staff can explore curated resources for special themes such as Black History Month or Women’s History Month. Plus, users can lean on Gale’s filtering features to ensure titles align with their research and instructional goals.
Gale also has a new partnership with Bloomsbury Publishing. The forthcoming Bloomsbury titles focus on history, religion, and minority peoples and voices, across the globe.
Enrich Student and Faculty Research
Give users the power to find and share more relevant results in one platform. For institutions that subscribe to our other content and services, Gale eBooks connects users across the Gale ecosystem. When you select a title from our lists, you can explore recommendations for related resources housed in Gale Primary Sources—including Archives Unbound—along with companion materials in various Gale databases.
Syncing up with other Gale tools empowers users to pursue new perspectives in their work, expanding and improving research and learning possibilities and unlocking new, interdisciplinary approaches. Students and faculty can navigate directly between Gale Primary Sources and the correlating section in Gale eBooks in your library’s collection for an enhanced, streamlined research experience.
Our academic eBooks platform ensures your users have access to the latest editions, so faculty can trust that everyone is on the same page (literally), and benefitting from the most up-to-date research. Boosting your library with eBooks will give students and faculty a flexible resource that can be easily searched, annotated, and bookmarked, enhancing the research and study experience.
Optimize Gale Benefits
When your institution becomes part of our academic network, you gain more than just access to our vast eBook offerings. You also receive personalized assistance and around-the-clock technical support, ensuring a smooth and hassle-free experience.
Maximize your investment and implement a successful campus-wide roll-out by tapping into our ready-made digital marketing toolkits. You can also leverage faculty teaching guides and professional development materials to make sure your campus is fully trained to take advantage of Gale resources. Our team is dedicated to helping you integrate Gale eBooks into your current university library systems and processes, making the transition as seamless as possible.
As universities seek to capture new and expanding demographics and compete in a tightening market, you need an all-options approach to contain costs and reduce barriers to student success. Gale eBooks is an essential tool for your campus community that will drive down costs, improve access, and spur an interdisciplinary approach to research. See for yourself: you can browse our extensive and ever-expanding list of academic titles.
If your institution doesn’t currently use Gale eBooks, contact your local representative today to discover more about this product, learn about our unique pricing options, and even request a trial.