October 21, 2021

Hi, 

I am happy to announce the recent addition of 106 titles to our statewide ebook offerings. These titles were selected from lists provided by Gale in collaboration with Carrie Light and Laura Axon (thanks!), the K-12 reps on the Statewide Database Licensing Advisory Committee, to enhance the collection’s K-12 coverage with a special emphasis on elementary-age users. These new titles cover topics related to science, social studies, and news literacy and also include a few Spanish-language titles for younger elementary students. 

Want to know which ebooks were added with this update? Sort column A of the Oregon Gale Ebooks Title List spreadsheet and look for “oregonsc2021-1.” Or, use this filtered view of the spreadsheet. 

How to Access the Ebooks

All of the new titles have been integrated into the statewide collection available in the Gale eBooks database. Titles that are classified as K-5 by Gale staff are also available in Gale In Context: Elementary. Those databases are linked on the elementary and secondary Find Information pages on OSLIS. (Sidenote: Portland State University’s A Classroom Atlas for Elementary and Middle Schools, in English and Spanish, is a new resource on the Find Information pages.) 

Text View vs. Book View

In the Gale eBooks database, ebooks open in text view. Users can change to book view by selecting that option from the toolbar at the top of the ebook page. It’s the opposite for Gale In Context: Elementary – books open in book view, but users can change to text view by selecting that option from the toolbar at the top of the ebook page. 

How to Translate Ebook Text

As noted, some of the ebooks are available in Spanish. Users who want to read the text of any ebook in a different language may use the translate tool at the top of the page to select from over 40 languages. The translate tool is only available when using the text view. 

MARC Records & List of Titles

If you want to add MARC records to your library catalog, Gale provides them for all of the statewide ebooks available in the Gale eBooks database. Those are available on the MARC Records page of Gale’s support site for Oregon library staff. You may download set(s) by audience level or create your own set. That page is also where the Oregon Gale Ebooks Title List spreadsheet “lives.” (Sidenote: There are also MARC records for the ebooks available through the National Geographic Kids (NGK) database. NGK has over 600 ebooks for elementary and middle school students!) 

If the formatting of this email is wonky or if you are not seeing screenshots, view the same information here. 

Classroom teachers may want to know about the new ebooks. Questions? Please ask. 

Thanks,
Jen 

Jen Maurer
School Library Consultant
State Library of Oregon