Home Base

By Meredith H.  From my kindergarten days through middle school, my family moved 11 times. I attended 8 different schools in 6 cities. Wherever we found ourselves, the place we visited first was always the closest public library. There, I found the companionship of old friends on the shelves as I struggled to make new … Read more

Special Libraries are, Well . . . Special

By Jennifer M.  I am the librarian for the Hartford Medical Society (HMS) Historical Library, located in the sub-basement of UConn Health in Farmington, CT. According to Wikipedia, a special library is “a term for a library that is neither an academic, school, public or national library. Special libraries include corporate libraries, law libraries, medical … Read more

Celebrating Amelia Earhart with the National Geographic Society

By Anne Marie Houppert

Amelia Earhart is in the news again amidst reports that wreckage originally discovered two decades ago does, indeed, belong to her missing plane. Rather than focus on the mystery of her disappearance, we’d like to celebrate this discovery by paying homage to the aviator’s many accomplishments.

For instance, did you know Amelia has a connection to the National Geographic Society? Not only was she awarded the Special Gold Medal by the Society, but she also authored a May 1935 National Geographic magazine article, “My Flight From Hawaii.” The article recounts her preparation for a solo flight from Honolulu to San Francisco, starting with the voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii with her Lockheed secured on the aft tennis court of the ship Lurline—photos included! On January 11th, 1935, the weather conditions were deemed favorable enough and she took off:

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GVRL Delivers What You Want from eBooks

By Pat Coryell

As the Vice President and Publisher over GVRL, I focus my time immersed in market research, customer feedback, and user testing data to best understand the gaps and pain points in today’s eBook landscape, as well as identify the gains Gale might deliver to our library customers and users.

I’m often in problem-solving mode, as we and our customers across academic, public, and school libraries, take on the many challenges involved with shifting to meet evolving user needs brought about by changes in student/community demographics, differentiated learning styles, and the introduction of new technologies.

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Bookmobile

By Juanita H.  When I was in the 4th grade 50 years ago, I went to a country school. The school didn’t have running water or an inside bathroom and it didn’t have a library. I could do without the running water and an inside bathroom, but I couldn’t do without books. I found out … Read more

Calling All Patrons–Perfecting Community Outreach

By Laura Damon-Moore

Effectively reaching out to your community can be tricky. On October 31, Laura Damon-Moore, Co-Founder of Libraries as Incubators Project, shared her expertise on community outreach for the weekly Gale Geek. Laura was unable to do the usual live Q&A because her webinar was prerecorded; however, she still answered listeners’ questions… see below!

I was bummed not to be able to be there “in person” for our conversation last Friday, but I’m pleased to be able to continue to share some insight on community outreach with Cengage-Gale’s readers today.

I’m going to expand on some questions that I received after the conversation on Friday, in hopes that others will find my responses useful.

How do you use the community based mentors or volunteers IN your library to support programming?

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Electronic Resources – Marketing on a Shoestring

Public Library Marketing on a Shoestring

By Sally Dewey

As the Electronic Resources Manager, an important part of my job is promoting the resources we buy.  I’ve actually had this job (under one title or another) since CD-ROM networks were around—back then we were just trying to alert the user in the building that we had something beyond books on the shelf. Then, in 1997, with web-based databases it was about the Library being the patron’s Information Home Page 24/7, or “Where it all Clicks.

Today, as public libraries are battling to stay relevant, we want to want to attract, snag, and entice patrons into discovering the wealth of resources we make available online.  Why would we want to do that?  To battle patron ignorance.

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Topic Finder: Helping Users Search to Research

Topic Finder Search

As of October 31, Term Clusters has evolved into Topic Finder in Gale Artemis: Literary Sources, Literature Criticism Online, Something About the Author Online, and Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online and all periodical resources such as:

• Academic OneFile
• Fine Arts & Music Collection
• Gardening, Landscape & Horticulture Collection
• Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Life & Issues Collection
• General Business File ASAP
• General OneFile

Read moreTopic Finder: Helping Users Search to Research