Schools

Why We Choose Gale

By Jenny Wirtz, Teacher Librarian, Ankeny High School

In Iowa, we are fortunate to have the support of Area Education Agencies (AEA) that assist the local K-12 school districts. One of the services that our AEA provides to us is access to many high-quality resources at no cost to our district, including several Gale products. However, I still choose to spend a portion of my shrinking budget on three specific Gale Databases because I believe they offer the best experiences for our high school students. What puts Gale above the competition? I believe it is their quality content, appealing layout and design, and above all the seamless integration between the Gale products and other tools we use such as Google Drive, Google Classroom, and EasyBib.

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Enhance Research with Opposing Viewpoints In Context

By Holly Hibner If there’s one source I love during a presidential election year, it is the Opposing Viewpoints In Context database! This is a librarian’s dream because our patrons are looking for information on all kinds of controversial topics, and matching their own stance to that of the candidates. Opposing Viewpoints presents all sides … Read more

Celebrate the Freedom to Read

By Traci Cothran

Reading is central to everything we do here at Gale—and whatbbw you do at your library every day—so it’s a good bet the majority of us use Banned Books Week to rally around the works that cause a little controversy.  This year’s Banned Books Week focuses on celebrating Diversity, and runs September 25 – October 1.

I’m an avid reader of middle grade and young adult fiction, so it drives me a little batty when parents ban amazing novels that speak to youth. Some authors are even dis-invited from appearing at schools to talk about their books and the issues affecting kids today.  For instance, the graphic novel Drama, by Raina Telgemeier, has caused grumblings for two gay characters kissing, but I’ve yet to meet a middle school girl who doesn’t love this series.  Author Meg Medina faced scrutiny with her novel about high school bullying, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, because the title has a swear word in it—and you know such language is never spoken in school hallways!  Kate Messner was dis-invited from a school speaking engagement while on tour for her book, The Seventh Wish, because the main character’s sister struggles with a heroin addiction, affecting the whole family.  But there’s no reason to talk about the real-life heroin epidemic affecting kids in high schools and middle schools across the U.S., is there?

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Libraries Build Community Partnerships in the Name of Economic Development

The Decatur Public Library, Forsyth Public Library, Mt. Zion Public Library, and several local entities joined forces in the name of economic development to offer DemographicsNow: Business & People, an online business tool that provides detailed demographic data on more than 24 million active businesses, and 206 million consumers. This new resource makes it easy for all types of users to collect, analyze and act upon information, all from a single location.

Watch this video from Decatur & Macon County to see how DemographicsNow can help local entrepreneurs.

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Fall into Great Titles

By Candy Jones-Guerin

Did you know? Geoffrey Chaucer, known as the Father of English literature, first used the word autumn in 1374 to name the brisk season after summer. Derived from the Latin word autumnus, meaning “the passing of the year,” Chaucer’s word, autumn, became popular around the 16th century. Meanwhile, in 1545, North America coined the term “fall” to describe the season when leaves are falling from the trees, which was previously known to them as “harvest.”

No matter which term you use, it’s time to bundle up, break out the sweaters, and get ready to enjoy the cool, crisp air that the season is known for. It’s also a great time to celebrate all things fall in your school, and we’re here to help with some great titles to get you started!

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National Bullying Prevention Month

By Debra Kirby

When my oldest daughter, now a middle school teacher, brought home her first essay, it was on the subject of bullying. She wrote it after reading Judy Blume’s Blubber for a school assignment. The essay, which I still have, provided a preview of what a kind, compassionate person and awesome teacher she would one day become. As the 10th anniversary of National Bullying Prevention Month approaches this October, I thought I’d do a little research on the subject, which was never the focus of national attention when I was a student. It’s only in relatively recent years that bullying has been commonly recognized as something other than a “natural part of growing up” or rite of passage.

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Travel Back in Time with Historical Artifacts

edison-talking-doll
Edison Talking Doll 2

By Traci Cothran

Quick: What do these objects all have in common?

  • Feed-sack Dress
  • John Brown’s Sharps Rifle
  • Edison Talking Doll
  • Psychedelic Lunch Box
  • A Monkey listening to the Scopes Trial

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Discovery: It’s More Than a Service; It’s a Way of Thinking

By Karen McKeown

Librarians learned long ago that the Field of Dreams adage “If you build it, they will come” does not apply to library resources.  Obtaining great resources is only the first step.  To be truly effective, library resources must be placed clearly and deliberately in the path of the intended users – and that means being where students, educators, and patrons go to find information.  To the user, what matters most is finding the right content at the right time with ease.

As we work to blaze new trails in the area of “discovery,” Gale is finding innovative ways to put information in the path of potential users – integrating it into the classroom, providing pathways to it on the open web, and expanding the reach of the library.  And we’re doing this with a very broad perspective – which means working with partners such as Google and Google Scholar; working with library services providers such as ProQuest, EBSCO and OCLC; and working with our own Cengage teams to enhance course materials and courseware such as MindTap™.

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The Dark and the Light: Dahl on Paper and Film

By Catherine DiMercurio

When I learned that September was the first ever Roald Dahl month, I tumbled instantly and joyfully back to my childhood, to another September day when I was beginning the third grade at a new school. My classmates and I sat clustered on the floor, around the feet of our teacher. She was kind and soft-spoken and smelled of vanilla, and she began reading James and the Giant Peach to us. The freckled blond boy next to me kept poking my shoulder, trying to annoy me or get me in trouble or both. But he was easy to ignore because I was instantly enveloped by the story of James and his horrible aunts and his glorious, magical adventure. And his new friends. Making new friends in a strange world sounded pretty lovely too, and just as fantastical and unlikely to a shy girl at a new school as James’s giant insect companions were to him.

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Gene Wilder, Roald Dahl, and the Chocolate Factory

By Traci Cothran

Gene Wilder’s passing is hard to accept, as he’s forever etched in minds playing Willy Wonka, complete with top hat and bushy eyebrows.  Or perhaps you best remember him with his mustache and frizzy hair in “Young Frankenstein,” in cowboy boots as the Waco Kid in “Blazing Saddles,” or as the nervous Leo Bloom with his blue blanket in “The Producers.”  They’re all amazing performances, but since Wonka is my personal favorite, and Roald Dahl a beloved writer, I took a look through our Gale collections to find some Wonka-related things about which to reminisce – here are just a few of them:

Did you know there was a Smell-o-Vision showing of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory at the Boston Children’s Museum in 2007, where fans “forcibly waft[ed] the smells of blueberry pie and banana tapi(ph) over the audience, as well as the scents of dirt, grass and sushi”?  WOW, OH WOW.

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