Posted April 25, 2016
by: Meghan C. Olivier
The 2016 CODiE Awards, presented by the Software & Information Industry Associations (SIIA), have recognized three products from Gale, a part of Cengage Learning:
Read moreGale Products Named Finalists for 2016 SIIA CODiE Awards
Posted on February 9, 2016
By Megan McCarthy
I love to garden, and over the years I’ve gotten pretty good at it. However, that wasn’t always the case. When I first started, every spring I’d run to Lowes, and pick out all the blooming plants I thought looked pretty. I’d bring them home, and plant them in my yard. Then, every year, I would watch in horror as they would wither and die. What was I doing wrong? Well, as it turned out, almost everything. I finally consulted with a gardening expert, and found that plants had to be grown according to their needs. Some needed shade, some sun. Some needed dry soil, and others needed water. Most liked to be planted when they weren’t in bloom, probably the reason I was killing so many. I learned some important lessons, but the most valuable lesson I learned was, when you are in trouble, ask an expert.
Posted on January 19, 2016 By Megan McCarthy My son plays hockey, and when he was little, he held his stick wrong. No matter how many times his coach told him to put his right hand further down the stick, he would slide it back up to the top with his left. This gave him … Read more
Posted on September 9, 2015
Posted by Jan Snyder and Jennifer Maurer
Part II
As we wrote in Part I of this series, 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. Statewide access provides consistency for students as they move from elementary to middle school and then high school.
But the real value and power of these resources are unleashed when librarians and educators collaborate and communicate. In the second part of this blog series, we’ll discuss – from our own perspectives – communication.
(If you missed it, be sure to also read Part I — Driving Electronic Content Discovery and Usage: Collaboration.)
Jennifer
Electronic Mailing List:
While presenting about Gale databases to various audiences falls under the heading of training, it is also a form of communication. However, I also have a direct channel of communication about OSLIS and its resources, including the statewide databases. The State Library created an electronic mailing list called OSLIST. As I learn about new school library staff in Oregon, I automatically subscribe them. Through OSLIST, I share ideas for how to use the databases as well as communicate about new Gale products and features.
Read moreDriving Electronic Content Discovery and Usage: Communication – Part 2
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.
Read moreDriving Electronic Content Discovery and Usage: Collaboration – Part 1
The 2015 CODiE Awards, presented by the Software and Information and Industry Association (SIIA) has recognized to two outstanding Gale products:
Read moreGale a CODiE Finalist in Three Categories for Analytics and Education Resources