By Michelle Eickmeyer
In just over three weeks, we’ll once again be coming together to celebrate the role and value of librarians, and librarians and staff. Though the winter meeting is not as widely attended (and is quite a lot of meetings), the excitement of an ALA is difficult to match.
As vendors attending the show, we’re able to hear from you directly what concerns and issues you are trying to overcome and sharing some of the exciting things we have going on at Gale.
And there’s a lot!
Earlier this year, Gale embarked on the strategic decision to become a Google Apps for Education Partner. This enables us to both make content more discoverable (and trackable to you!) AND easier to save/return to later. Tens of thousands of users have saved documents from the Gale resources they access through your library with their Google credentials. Students and teachers are accessing their In Context resources directly through apps in Google Classroom. Students and faculty beginning their research in Google Scholar are being directed to the library’s Academic OneFile. We’re so excited about our partnership with Google, and everything we’re working on next with them! More information can be found here.
At the end of this week, one of our most exciting, unique, and scholarship-changing primary source archives will be available. Early Arabic Printed Books, Module 1: Religion and Law will allow close interrogation of the most important collections of Arabic-language materials from British Library. Interfaces in Arabic and European languages, right-to-left-read navigation of Arabic texts, an embedded Arabic keyboard, and newly developed optical character recognition software for early Arabic printed script have been introduced to ensure scholars in Arabic-speaking countries and those engaged in Arabic studies across the world can cross-search and research this extensive range of texts. Early Arabic Printed Books will have the research tools your students and faculty have come to expect from Gale, making new research and data interrogation possible like never before.
In the sample here, you can see my search result for the Arabic word for father.
We’re also gearing up for some very exciting new initiatives this spring.
One of the most common areas of need which consistently come to light with both librarians and faculty is the need to enable, support, and create an ability to research with beginning university/college students. Gale Researcher, is designed to provide relevant, appropriate, trusted content align directly to survey course objectives and what students are learning in class. Flexibility of content allows instructors to cover topics in any order to correspond to any text, and upload or link to supplemental materials from any source.
We’ve partnered with Cyber Science to bring interactive, manipulable items and elements to enhance science topics at the high school and university level, and layering in relevant, supporting content to encourage discovery, support learning, and enable further study.
History and literature – some of our favorite subjects! American Fiction, a primary source archive, will release supporting both areas in exciting new ways. This collection of fiction titles will be available for use with both your historic, primary source collections on Gale Artemis: Primary Sources and, later in the year, for use alongside your Gale Artemis: Literary Sources collection. The possibilities for discovery are endless — and very exciting!
But that’s not all! Be sure to stop by Gale Booth 1405 while in Boston. And for those of you not attending, keep an eye on your inbox. We’ll be sure to keep you up to date!
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About the Author
Michelle is an “anytime!” traveler and language enthusiast. She has degrees in talking from Central Michigan and Michigan State University. She is currently becoming a runner and used to play golf in high school.
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