impact

Impact Live: Free Virtual Event for Public Libraries

Connect, Inspire, Innovate at Impact Live Gale is hosting its first multiday virtual event featuring 40+ speakers and 20+ sessions covering data, entrepreneurship, equity, literacy, and workforce. Read the full press release. Join us on September 29 from 1:00–5:00 PM ET and September 30 from 1:00–5:30 PM ET. Registration is now open. You’ll hear from … Read more

NaperLaunch Builds Their Brand, Becomes Busy Hub for Startup Community

| By Gale Staff | To hear Kent Palmer tell it, NaperLaunch began much like any new business does; by recognizing and fulfilling an identified need. In 2013, Palmer, business librarian at Naperville Public Library just outside of Chicago, recognized that many members of the business community had the same five basic needs: information, guidance, … Read more

Empowering Newsmakers

| By Brian Risse, Vice President, Public Library, Wholesale, and Large Print Sales | As I think about the impact that libraries have on the community, it’s hard not to reflect on the 2018 federal budget that proposed to eliminate the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the advocacy efforts needed to defend … Read more

Developing a Faster Roadmap to Your Patrons

| By Liz Mason, Vice President of Product, Gale | At Gale, we understand that it’s important for today’s libraries to bring trustworthy digital content into the natural workflow. To help you achieve that goal, we are rolling out a number of new releases designed to make it easier for discovery and access to Gale content … Read more

2017-2018 IMPACT is Here!

IMPACT is a new style of magazine, written for and by public librarians. It’s filled with tips, insights, and advice from library leaders to help you succeed at empowering your community. Plus, the best of—frontlist nonfiction eBooks, databases, and online learning programs. View or Download a digital version>> Here’s a preview of what’s inside: COVER … Read more

There’s a New Teacher in Town

Miss Humblebee’s Academy is an early literacy program for 3‑6 year olds (and their parents) to prepare for success in kindergarten and beyond. With hundreds of fun, interactive lessons in Math, Science and Social Studies, Language and Literacy, Art, and Music, the curriculum increases in difficulty as the user progresses through the program.

Miss Humblebee’s Academy assess cognitive skills at regular intervals for measurable improvement toward kindergarten readiness and offers a developmental observation checklist allowing parents to review and record social and emotional growth as an additional condition of preparedness. Libraries can also access aggregate data to see how young learners progress.

Sounds too good to be true? Read a review:

Read moreThere’s a New Teacher in Town

Leaving Money on the Table

 How to Get Started with Major Gift Fundraising from Individuals

Posted June 29, 2016

By David Baker, JD, Principal, Giving Design Group, Inc.

Giving Design Group, Inc. is one of the few companies that provides comprehensive fundraising & development services for libraries. David Bake, the founder of the organization, shares some knowledge on how to get fundraising for public libraries started. Read what he has to say!

Year after year, about 80% of charitable giving comes from individuals. The most recent Giving USA numbers tell us that 72% of annual giving comes from individuals and 8% of giving is received from bequests (the last wishes of previously living individuals). Only 15% of annual giving comes from foundations and 5% from corporations.

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Leaving Money on the Table

How to Get Started with Major Gift Fundraising from Individuals

Overcoming Barriers to Innovation

Posted June 22, 2016

By John Chrastka, Executive Director, EveryLibrary

EveryLibrary is the first and only national organization dedicated to building voter support for libraries. They are chartered “to promote public, school, and college libraries, including by advocating in support of public funding for libraries and building public awareness of public funding initiatives”. Their primary work is to support local public libraries when they have a referendum or measure on the ballot. John Chrastka, the Executive Director of EveryLibrary, encourages libraries with a few important tips on how to overcome the barriers to innovation they most often face.

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The Gale and Google Integration at Work

Posted June 13, 2016

By Holly Hibner, Adult Services Coordinator, Plymouth District Library (MI)

As libraries continually seek to be a valued educational partner in communities, schools, and institutions, bringing trustworthy digital content into the natural path of their users has never been more important. To make it easier for people to find and use this relevant, authoritative information, Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, has partnered with Google for Education in two ways: providing intuitive integration of popular workflow tools through Google Apps for Education and indexing content in Google Scholar. With more than 50 million Google Apps for Education teachers and students worldwide, and an average of over 40,000+ Google search engine queries per second, Google is indisputably the place where people get their answers.

Information is truly at our fingertips now that Gale has become a Google for Education Partner. Many of Google’s popular tools like Drive, Docs, and Classroom are now integrated with Gale’s top products. Information seekers often look to Google for answers. Now they can combine the power of Google with the content authority of Gale databases.

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Why Advocacy Matters for Public Libraries

Posted on May 31, 2016

By Rhonda Sewell 

Long gone is the notion of public libraries lingering in the shadows and doing little to advocate their value to their communities and promote their many offerings, programs, and activities. Advocacy and unapologetic promotion of our transformative systems is now a major priority. Such ideas hold a sacred place in our discussions surrounding public service, strategic goals, funding, construction, marketing, and digital implementation for libraries. Even the Twittersphere of endless hashtags has transitioned from reading sentiments to action items and rallying statements such as #LibrariesMatter, #LibrariesTransform, and #SaveOurLibraries.

Because doing more with less is a reality for public libraries, especially as competition for funding sources and customer demands increases, advocacy matters now more than ever.  “Advocacy, the process of acting on behalf of the public library to increase public funds and ensure that it has the resources needed to be up to date, is critical to the success of libraries,” states the Public Library Association (PLA)[i].

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