June 10, 2021

Hi, 

Please see the original announcement as a reminder about the integration of Gale K-5 ebooks into the Gale In Context: Elementary database. It took longer than originally expected, but now the integration is complete. Again, if your school or district has not purchased any Gale ebooks for elementary students, you can still access the 18 titles that are available through the statewide contract.  

As part of the integration project, the ebook reader tool within Gale In Context: Elementary was updated to be more intuitive for younger users than the ebook reader that is used in Gale Ebooks. For example, ebooks open to the first page of readable content instead of to a table of contents, the Listen tool (ReadSpeaker) is available at the top of the default Book View instead of having to switch to the Text View to access it, and images are automatically sized to the user’s screen. This recorded webinar covers the new ebook integration and more. Start around the 12:30 minute mark (for about a minute) and then around the 23:25 minute mark (for about 3 minutes) for details about the ebook reader. 

There are 3 ways to access the K-5 ebooks from the elementary Find Information page on OSLIS:

• From the Gale In Context: Elementary database, click on the Books tab in the light blue toolbar near the top of the page to get to the ebooks landing page that lists all of the K-5 titles (those from the statewide contract and any your library may have). The default tab is Topics, so click on Books:
  
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• From the Gale In Context: Elementary database, do a search. If there are books with related content, the books will appear in the list of search results. This example is from a search on animal migration:
  
             =>                    
• The Gale Ebooks database that is linked on the elementary Find Information page will now open to Gale In Context: Elementary’s ebooks landing page. (On the secondary Find Information page, the link for Gale Ebooks still directs to the Gale Ebooks database since ebooks are not integrated into the Gale databases for middle and high schoolers.)
  
              =>          

 
I know that the school year is over or nearly over, but elementary teachers may want to know about this update – perhaps in the fall. If you have questions, please ask. 

Thanks,
Jen

Jennifer Maurer
School Library Consultant
State Library of Oregon