September 26, 2022

Hi Folks, 

I hope your week has gotten off to a super start! 

Thanks to the Statewide Database Licensing Program, Oregonians have access to a suite of Gale databases (collections of articles and some multimedia content) via their library. Centralized K-12 access is on the elementary and secondary Find Information pages on OSLIS. New to the databases? Information at the very bottom of the elementary educator and secondary educator Find Information pages covers the basics. 

Through their national support site, Gale provides training and marketing materials for each database, and a product page collects the materials for a database in one location. From the Product Support page, select Browse Products, and scroll to find a specific database. Or, enter a keyword in the search box on the right. For example, enter “middle” (no quotes) in the search box to find the product page for Gale In Context: Middle School. Then click “Training” in the blue toolbar near the top of the page to jump to the training materials section. There you will find lesson plans, scavenger hunts, resource guides, tip sheets, video tutorials, and recorded webinars. As another example, the Gale In Context: Elementary product page has a new lesson about bees and honey. Resources vary by database. 

In addition, content-specific training materials feature new resources and a calendar to support monthly themes. The webpage is accessible from the Training Center menu on the Gale support site. Note that the themes pull in content from a variety of Gale databases, including ones that are not part of the statewide contract. These are a few themes that rely on databases that are available to the Oregon K-12 community:

• February => Black History Month: Multiplying Achievements (Gale In Context: U.S. History, HS & maybe MS)
• March => Women’s History Month: 72 Years of Suffrage (Gale In Context: High School)
• April => National Poetry Month (Gale Literature: LitFinder, HS & maybe MS)
• November => Native American Heritage Month: Honor the Past (Gale In Context: U.S. History, HS & maybe MS)    
• November => Day of the Dead (Gale In Context: Elementary or Middle or High School)
• Any time  => The Great Debate (Gale In Context: Middle School or Opposing Viewpoints, MS & HS)
• Any time  => A Journey through Space (Gale In Context: Elementary)

More content will be added throughout the year. 

The lesson plans and new content-specific materials have multiple uses: introduce students to the databases or teach students how to use the Gale databases, support teachers with content area instruction, library station activity, parent-child activity during open house, lesson plan for a library substitute, and more. Thanks for helping to spread the word. 

As always, if you have questions, please ask.  

Cheers,
Jen

Jen Maurer
School Library Consultant
State Library of Oregon