ESL Archives | Gale Blog: Library & Educator News

Equity for All Students—No Matter Their First Language

August 19, 2020

| By Taylor Frey | I’m not a teacher, but I’m lucky to know many. One of my friends has experienced the challenges faced by English learners in her district firsthand, and has seen translated pieces make a huge difference for students. Often, when English learners struggle, it’s not that they don’t know the material … Read more

New Foreign Language Classes Now Available in Gale Courses

September 12, 2017August 21, 2017

Carry out your library’s educational mission with Gale Courses. Offer community members lifelong learning opportunities with 365+ engaging, online courses that focus on professional development, technology skills, and personal enrichment—including seven NEW foreign language courses. Classes are six weeks long, mobile responsive, and taught by college instructors who are experts in their field. The online … Read more

The Biggest Large Print Myths Busted!

July 3, 2018April 20, 2016

Spoiler Alert: The large print format offers benefits for people under the age of 60 with perfectly good eyesight.

Have you ever been so good at something you’ve found yourself pigeonholed? Being typecast can feel like a mixed blessing—your claim to fame shines bright, creating the shadow in which your other great qualities hide. If large print books were people, they would feel this acutely.

No doubt, large print books are a well-known solution for visually impaired readers, and those readers are typically seniors. Unfortunately for large print, being so good at solving this one problem for this one audience has led to a narrow, and sometimes inaccurate view of the usefulness of the format overall.

We’d love to enlist the expert MythBusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to explore the issue in detail, but if you’ve ever seen the Discovery Channel show, you know their mythbusting process tends to involve blowing things up, and we’d hate to see our beloved books so abused.

So, without the pyrotechnics, here are the biggest large print myths: BUSTED!

New Titles Added to the InfoTrac Collections in June 2015

July 14, 2015

The titles below have been recently added and can be located in the product using Basic or Advanced Search forms. Titles can be found via Browse Publications within two weeks. For complete coverage information please see the product title lists.

New Titles Added to the InfoTrac Collections in May 2015

June 11, 2015

Posted on June 11, 2015

The titles below have been recently added and can be located in the mentioned InfoTrac product using Basic or Advanced Search forms. Titles can be found via Browse Publications within two weeks. For complete coverage information please see the product title lists.

Announcing Audio Component in ChiltonLibrary

June 11, 2015June 10, 2015

Posted on June 10, 2015

ReadSpeaker text-to-speech technology is now available in the Repair and Bulletin/Recalls sections of ChiltonLibrary. ReadSpeaker® is the worldwide leader in online text to speech and its functionality lets users hear the article read out loud, as the words spoken are highlighted on the screen.

Aurora Public Library Encourages Staff and Patrons to “Think Gale”

December 31, 2014December 29, 2014

Public libraries play an important role in their communities, and they take their roles seriously. Case in point: Aurora Public Library (Aurora) in Illinois, which is dedicated to “supporting lifelong learning and access to information, knowledge, and ideas.” That’s no small task. Fortunately, GVRL eBooks are front and center in helping Aurora achieve its goals — offering patrons easy, quick access to informational resources covering the spectrum of subject areas, even when they’re not at the library.

Reference Specialist Sue Kovacs runs two reference desks at the Aurora’s main branch, where she’s responsible for buying all reference materials and keeping them updated and relevant. When Sue began working at the library in 2009, she saw that community dynamics were changing. “Most people didn’t want to have to come downtown to look at a reference collection. I evaluated our Gale products as well as the available alternatives.

Find Top Publisher’s Weekly Best Books of 2014…in Large Print

June 11, 2018December 2, 2014

The highly anticipated annual Publisher’s Weekly Best Books list gets the full attention of three enthusiastic groups of people:

Authors, who want their book to be on it
Readers, who refer to it to discover new books for their must-read list
Librarians, who use it to develop their collections with high-quality, relevant titles

Well, this year’s list has arrived, and it’s stocked with great books that readers in every community are itching to read.

Sexiest eBooks alive…or at least the most popular

October 30, 2014October 20, 2014

Stealing a page from People Magazine’s popular annual feature, we thought you may be interested to know what’s hot in the world of eBooks. I mean, there’s no Adam Levine or Johnny Depp here, but you’ll find a listing of fascinating and informative resources that are in high demand across the country. Nearly as exciting.

3 Surefire Tips to Help ESL/EFL Patrons Utilize eResources

February 23, 2018October 17, 2014

By Anne Nagrant

My experience living abroad as a Peace Corps Volunteer made me very sympathetic to those in our local communities for whom English is not their native language. No matter the level of English a patron has, public libraries should be prepared to serve all.

Inside the library, signage and pictures can help visitors find what they need. Library staff can enunciate clearly and try saying the same thing in different ways. Because some immigrants prefer reading to conversation, offer flyers and handouts to take home. Order free Spanish-language print materials from Gale’s ProMo site to promote Informe Académico or PowerSpeak Languages.