August 1, 2011

As part of the contract renewal announced last week, Gale is adding U.S. History in Context and GREENR to our statewide offerings at no additional cost.

What is U.S. History in Context?
This database provides a "complete overview of U.S. history that covers the most-studied events, issues, and current information" and "combines documents from Primary Source Microfilm's™ digital archives; articles from classic Macmillan Reference USA™ and Charles Scribner's Sons® references; as well as other Gale proprietary content such as country and era overview information, and full-text periodicals and journals." There are over 9,100 viewpoint essays, 5,000 primary documents, articles from over 95 Gale reference titles, journal content, and more. It uses the same interface as Student Resources in Context and Opposing Viewpoints in Context. http://www.gale.cengage.com/InContext/hist_us.htm

What is GREENR?
The acronym stands for Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources, and it is a "new, authoritative online resource that focuses on the academic study of sustainability and the environment." It allows users to navigate issue, organization, and country portals and provides news, video, primary source documents, interactive maps, refereed case studies, and more in research categories such as energy systems, healthcare, food, and green collar jobs. There is also an advisory board and blog for this product. http://www.gale.cengage.com/greenr/

Access
There are three ways to access the new databases on OSLIS.
1.    Go to the secondary student Find Information page. U.S. History in Context is featured in the third column, but because we cannot list every available database here, GREENR is not included on this page. We did not highlight either new database on the elementary student Find Information page because it is for featuring the databases most appropriate for K-5.
2.    Click on PowerSearch and you will be directed to the Gale common menu, which is a list of all databases in the statewide contract. PowerSearch is featured on the elementary and secondary Find Information pages.
3.    When you are logged in to almost any statewide Gale database, click on Change Databases, a choice in the toolbar at the top of the screen. (Sometimes you need to click on Tools and then on Change Databases.) Clicking on Change Databases takes you to the Gale common menu.

Title Lists
You can view the list of journals and reference books that are included in both databases.  http://www.gale.cengage.com/title_lists/

Tutorials and Tip Sheets
Gale has a few short tutorials about each product. The subjects are Navigating the Homepage, Searching, and Topic/Portal Pages and Documents. http://www.gale.cengage.com/guidedtour/index.htm Note that it can take a couple of minutes for videos to load. There are also search tip sheets for both databases. http://support.gale.com/gale/cat.html?cat=1196

Webinars
A Gale trainer will offer four webinars this month to introduce Oregon library staff to both databases. Half of each hour-long session will be devoted to U.S. History in Context and the other half to GREENR. Your opportunities to participate are on August 18th at 9:30 am or 2:00 pm and August 23rd at 11:00 am or 4:30 pm (Pacific time). See the PDF for webinar access details. One session will be recorded and posted on the Gale support sites for Oregon libraries.

Credits
If you already subscribe to either of the new databases, your Gale sales rep, Christine Stark (christine.stark@cengage.com), will be in touch about a credit.

Questions?  Please ask.

Thanks,
Jen

Jennifer Maurer
School Library Consultant
Library Development
Oregon State Library
250 Winter Street NE
Salem, OR  97301-3950
503-378-5011
jennifer.maurer@state.or.us