Jumping Into Digital Learning – One Librarian’s Story

Posted on September 3, 2015
Posted by Cenee Precure

Life never stops teaching. Be sure to never stop learning. ~ Michael Josephson

As our high school sat on the cusp of all things Google with shiny new Chromebooks and whispers of Google Classroom drifting through the hallways, the school library was at that place once again…dig in our heels and resist another district technology implementation or dive in and embrace the challenge!

As a relatively new librarian, serving high school faculty, staff, and students for the first time, I knew I had to build relationships, be willing to take some risks, and be bold enough to learn from my mistakes along the way. Thankfully, there were brave teachers that were willing to embark on this journey with me.

With cinnamon rolls in tow, I met with the English teachers during their PLC and presented a quick overview of the TexQuest resources and had a representative from Imagine Easy do an online webinar introducing the Scholar Edition (formerly known as the School Edition of EasyBib). I knew if I could get just one teacher to buy into how these two digital platforms could work together, the paperless research project might actually become more than just a seed of an idea.

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Grow Your Nonfiction Collection with Britannica Digital Learning Titles

Posted on September 2, 2015

Easy to search and highly visual nonfiction titles from Britannica Digital Learning can be a resource for your libraries and classrooms to help meet the education research needs for students of all ages. Available on Gale’s award-winning GVRL platform, students can take advantage of popular tools like automatic citation generation highlighting, annotation and more.

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Put Preschoolers in Your Community on a Path to Learning

Pre-K learning for public libraries

Offer highly-visual and content-rich digital learning that will appeal to young children who are at the peak of curiosity and wonderment. With accessibility on tablets and smart phones, and anytime, anywhere access, educational materials are now easier than ever to integrate into daily life.

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Driving Electronic Content Discovery and Usage: Collaboration – Part 1

Posted on August 31, 2015
Posted by Jan Snyder and Jennifer Maurer

As librarians, we feel privileged to have a very rich collection of Gale databases and eBooks at our fingertips to use with students and staff, at zero cost to us, through the Oregon State Library’s Statewide Database Licensing Program. This allows for statewide access to a wide range of vetted information, on unlimited topics, for use by our patrons. These same databases are available at K-16 throughout Oregon, as well as at public libraries, for use by all state residents. In talking with librarian friends across the country, we know that we enjoy a benefit not available in many states.

Funding for the statewide databases comes from a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant.  Another grant project was initiated some 15 years ago, when members of the Oregon Association of School Libraries (OASL) and Oregon State Library staff shared concerns about access to information literacy resources for students and teachers, as the number of licensed school librarians employed across the state declined. OASL applied for a LSTA grant from the State Library to create OSLIS, or the Oregon School Library Information System, and that has become a continuing statewide project. In addition to offering information literacy resources and citation generators in MLA and APA formats, OSLIS serves as the K-12 access point for the statewide databases.

Having statewide central access to the databases provides consistency for students as they move from elementary to middle school and then high school. It also means that students and educators served by school library staff who are not familiar with how to link directly to databases still have access to statewide resources.

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Back to School Britannica Savings

Save 30% on nonfiction eBooks for your pre-k, elementary, middle, and high school learners. Britannica Digital Learning offers online PreK-16 resources and instructional solutions that align to Common Core and state curriculum standards and are built upon Britannica’s reputation for trustworthy, up-to-date information, innovative development, and state-of-the-art delivery.

GVRL supports differentiated learning for learners of all ages with cover-to-cover PDF format delivers a colorful, visual experience to engage younger readers. Plus, ReadSpeaker text-to-speech technology is ideal for struggling readers, ELL/ESL students.

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Gale Technical Solutions: Custom Solutions for Your Library

By. Scott Steward

Gale, a part of Cengage Learning understands that each library has its own set of unique needs, and what works for one library may not work for another.  We know that in many cases the “one size fits all” approach to implementation is a compromise to what is just good enough. Instead of making you settle for what is just good enough, Gale wants you and your users to have the best possible experience using our products, and sometimes that requires a custom solution.

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Content Updates for Gale’s In Context (week of 8/24/2015)

Posted on August 27, 2015

New content and resources have been added to one of your favorite In Context databases. See what’s new!

Global Issues in Context

Two new portals were launched: Al-Shabab and MERS (Middle East Repository Syndrome in addition to 125 portal pages being updated in the last two weeks. Some of the topics included in the updates are:

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Content Updates for Kids InfoBits (week of 8/24/2015)

Posted on August 27, 2015

Take a look at the latest content that has been added to Kids InfoBits:

  • The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia has increased its content with the addition of Quarterly updates.
  • Under the category of Fish, six new entries have been made include Angelfish, Mollie, and the Mullet.
  • New homepage snippets (InfoBits) have been added for September including:
    • Museums feature in the Arts category
    • Back to School in the People category
    • Labor Day, which is September 7, in the Social Studies category
    • Read-A-New-Book-Month which is in September will be featured in the Literature category
    • Football is featured in the Sports category
  • Over 450 entries have been updated, with many of them focusing on marine life, contemporary figures and countries. Some of these that you’ll see are:

Read moreContent Updates for Kids InfoBits (week of 8/24/2015)