ACCESS LINKS: For passwords or other assistance please contact your Board contact or lisa.weaver@tdsb.on.ca

http://www.slideshare.net/resourceontarioschool/knowledge-ontario-mini-scenarios-fnl

Visit the above link to view and download a ppt which you may find useful in any presentations you might be making or that others might be making.  It illustrates extremely well how the databases can be used to best advantage in many different situations. 

http://campaign.constantcontact.com/render?v=001p2v57KM8pgYdFmdjECKpEmTgF87iIv61CqoIP_Fr0Ukug2g50fwhcJKFX6xiWXljva4yCOPxF7VlK3Cy3FW07fcztk3FkO1UiD_WOBXGBowXwuZeRMKVSFyOGZ_D-HUMkE_nguSiSc2fyAxm-WFIkupJzbAUHBYYHLikcB5ctnI%3D

Getting ready for 2010/2011 or planning Professional Learning for 2nd semester?

Contact Ed Groin @ Gale to book a training session for your team of 20 or more people: edward.gron@cengage.com

Gale can provide training on one or all of the resources below to your TLs, Teachers or other instructional staff in person or through an online session.

Gale provides all publically funded Ontario schools the following resources:

If you're heading to OLA's Super Conference in February, you can connect with KO in a dozen different ways. We're offering three pre-conference sessions, a stream of conference sessions, and have a big booth at the expo where you can demo the services and talk to us.

Details are in the last item in this newsletter or you can download KO at a glance here. We look forward to seeing you.

ASK ONTARIO
Interested in becoming an askON partner?  The askON team has fielded many inquiries from libraries interested in becoming askON partners for September 2010. To gauge the level of interest and help everybody understand how the service functions we've scheduled the first two information sessions for potential partners:These will be 30-45 minute virtual sessions. The askON project team will review the operational aspects of askON, the toolkit, the technology, outline partner responsibilities and benefits and answer your questions.

INFO SESSIONS

• Tuesday February 16 - 10:30am
• Friday February 19 - 10:30am

Please RSVP to Virginia Roy for either date: vroy@knowledgeontario.ca More dates to come.

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CONNECT ONTARIO
Consider joining before April

Word is spreading. More than 10 public libraries have the BiblioCommons discovery layer Online Public Access Catalogue installed on their systems and several others are completing surveys and getting ready to test it out. Come and hear firsthand what early adopters have to say about how this ground breaking service has helped to transform the experience of their patrons. 

As you may know, Knowledge Ontario has already pre-paid the license for any public library that has an ILS compatible with BiblioCommons. Libraries making the transition now have no set-up costs -- period. In addition, those libraries that sign up for the product by the end of April, 2010 will have their no-cost subscription period extended to July 31, 2011.

If your library ILS is one of: Sirsi-Dynix Symphony or Horizon (including versions that use Oracle or Informix as the database platform), Innovative Interfaces or Evergreen then you may be ready to take advantage of the free prepaid license window now.
 

INFO SESSIONS
A day-long session is planned for February 5th at the Oakville Public Library to provide an overview of the service, current functionality, integration with Drupal and other planned features, the provincial umbrella agreement as well as to assist with any questions about set-up and going live.

You can also learn about the product at the OLA Super Conference sessions -- see below or download KO at a glance here.

DIGITIZATION
VITA 3.4 Release: Streamlined features & new functionality
Responding to our Toolkit user needs, the VITA 3.4 toolkit upgrade makes data management easier as well as enhancing the public user's experience. The upgrade features:

• new customization options for Advanced Searching,
• optional Creative Commons licensing for digital objects,
• improved login and user management,
• new full text search and display features,
• and more...

RESOURCE ONTARIO
Gage Canadian Dictionary now live in Gale's Student Resource Centre 

The Gage Canadian Dictionary is an excellent resource for grades 9-12, and all Canadians, featuring over 140,000 entry words. A respected authority of Canadian English, this dictionary contains:

• clear and accurate definitions,
• IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) pronunciation key,
• extensive notes on homonyms and synonyms,
• hundreds of clear and supportive illustrations and photos,
• and more.  

• Brock University,
• Jordan Historical Museum,
• Niagara Falls Museum, 
• Niagara Historical Society Museum,
• Port Colborne Historical & Marine Museum, and
• RiverBrink Art Museum

The project's website will launch February 18th from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m. at the Niagara Historical Society Museum in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Bookmark the 1812 History website and check back to see some extraordinary documents, objects, and images from Ontario's 1812 era.
  
             
ASK ONTARIO
Internship program keeps askON humming

Last spring, in partnership with U of T's iSchool, askON launched a pilot project to train second year students and recent library school grads to work on askON/ONdemande, the province's collaborative virtual reference service.

Now a pool of close to 30 students volunteer up to two hours a week in the askON service. "Its a winning situation for everyone involved," said Virginia Roy, project manager.

"Despite everyone's best efforts the library partners aren't able to provide enough staff to cover the capacity the service needs, especially in evenings and on weekends. The students help fill slots in those very busy hours and get fantastic frontline virtual reference training and experience," she continued.

The askON management team trained 11 more student interns in January and had interest from over 30 students. A great article on the program can be found in the iSchool News.
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E-postcards of support: Tell us your story

Thank you to the many of you who have taken the time to share your experiences in helping Knowledge Ontario tell our story. We have received over 900 e-postcards of support to date. We have begun using your good words and personal stories to introduce the new Minister of Culture Michael Chan and other provincial parliamentarians and staff to Knowledge Ontario. Through your postcards we are telling the real day-to-day impact of the resources and services KO offers with its partners.

If you use KO services but have not yet filled out an e-postcard, please do so now. And enjoy the postcards we have received already.

Gale's Culinary Arts Collection is truly a wellrounded and informative resource suitable for the novice, the student and the professional chef.  So go ahead – serve up fast, fresh information for researchers in your library.   Results from your search can yield content from magazines, academic journals, books, news and multimedia. Easy-to-understand information is returned quickly and often includes photos, images and illustrations. 

Elementary students and Secondary students who have introductory level information needs will find what they are looking for at Gale's Kids InfoBits.Full text reference and articles are available for searching via a graphical interface or textbox searching.  Articles can be saved in a knapsack, printed or emailed. 

Checkout Gale's PowerSerach with the keywords Olympics 2010 for podcasts, elementary and secondary print resources about this year's Olympics. 

Here is just a sample for the thousands of full text articles available: 

Please find 2 sample handouts for all the resources provided from Resource Ontario here: http://lisaradha.books.officelive.com/Databases.aspx The teacher-librarians who have already used them have had good response from teachers.

FYI: http://campaign.constantcontact.com/render?v=001j56_HnETlbxknVnl-Xjd1aV2WHPLETgDJFku5_tyk97F5FR1KQsm4QYBDghRr76lCeewGQ1iIY9rCwrgcv22GoKJMzDnmDEoIKuftslT2BbgvjKcLJ0qV9VSL_QGR8o6R0jKBwG9DANR80dj_xIAqGl65G4i9v1VQy_eNIIAqtk%3D