Duluth, Ga., April 16, 2019: Equinox is pleased to welcome Degenstein Community Library to Evergreen with their successful migration to the Pennsylvania Integrated Library System (PaILS) SPARK Consortium.

The Degenstein Community Library’s move will support 7,516 patrons. The migration included a total of 63,991 bibliographic records. Services provided by Equinox included project management and Evergreen software configuration. Data extraction and bibliographic deduplication were completed as part of their migration encompassing item, patron, and transaction records. The library prepared for the migration with on site and remote training from Equinox.

“Has anyone ever said a migration or change in the library world, for that matter, is easy?,” said Melissa Rowse, director at Degenstein Community Library. “The Degenstein Community Library certainly can. Erika Rohlfs and the team at Equinox made the transition to SPARK painless. Our weekly phone calls kept us abreast of upcoming discussions and topics. Our training with Felicia Beaudry helped to alleviate fears and concerns from the staff. Our Go-Live day had very little issues all because we were prepared by Equinox. We thoroughly enjoyed working with Equinox and highly recommend them.”

PaILS was founded in June 2011 as a non-profit organization to provide an open source integrated library system. It oversees SPARK, a consortia of Evergreen libraries across Pennsylvania. Equinox and PaILS have been collaborating on the SPARK consortia since 2013.

“It has been a great pleasure working with Melissa during Degenstein's migration to SPARK,” said Erica Rohlfs, Senior Implementation Project Manager at Equinox. “She gives thoughtful consideration to how the process may affect her community and made the patrons her top priority during the decision making process.”

About Equinox Open Library Initiative
Equinox Open Library Initiative Inc. is a nonprofit company engaging in literary, charitable, and educational endeavors serving cultural and knowledge institutions. As the successor to Equinox Software, Inc., the Initiative carries forward a decade of service and experience with Evergreen and other open source library software. At Equinox OLI we help you empower your library with open source technologies. To learn more, please visit https://www.equinoxinitiative.org/.

About Evergreen
Evergreen is an award-winning ILS developed to provide an open source product able to meet the diverse needs of consortia and high transaction public libraries. However, it has proven to be equally successful in smaller installations including special and academic libraries. Today, over 1500 libraries around the world are using Evergreen including NC Cardinal, SC Lends, and B.C. Sitka. For more information about Evergreen, including a list of all known Evergreen installations, see http://evergreen-ils.org.

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New Marketing Toolkit Provides Academic Libraries With Guidance and Tools for Campus Engagement and Outreach

ACRL 2019 Conference, CLEVELAND – April 11, 2019 – The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and Gale, a Cengage company, have collaborated to create the ACRL Libraries Transform Toolkit. This free new toolkit provides academic and research libraries with easy-to-use tools and resources to develop effective marketing and outreach strategies to promote their services and impact to students, faculty and administrators. The toolkit extends the American Library Association’s (ALA) Libraries Transform Campaign, that’s designed to increase public awareness of the value, impact and services provided by libraries and library professionals.

“We created this toolkit in response to an evaluation we conducted with academic libraries on marketing and outreach activities, where they expressed a need for access to easy-to-use, outreach best practices and materials that are flexible and adaptable. In addition, the toolkit also allows for materials to be uploaded and shared as part of each section, so that everyone can contribute to its content,” said Cinthya Ippoliti, chair of the ACRL Libraries Transform Task Force. “The toolkit provides academic libraries with the guidance needed to develop, execute and measure their community engagement efforts alongside their strategic marketing plans.”

Key resources in the ACRL Libraries Transform Toolkit include:

• Marketing Instructional Materials: Foundational guidance on how to create a marketing strategy, define message positioning by target audience, and plan campaigns.

• "Because" Statement Templates: Designed to help libraries develop messaging statements to promote their services and resources or issues of importance. Example statements are provided as well as ALA’s formula where libraries can create their own.

• Community Engagement Framework: Provides a framework and tactics to develop, support and sustain effective community outreach and communication strategies.

• Methods for Communicating and Measuring Impact: Provides insight and best practices on analyzing, measuring and communicating library outreach strategy results.

“Academic libraries play an important role in supporting student success and connecting researchers to new insights and ideas, but they often lack the staff, time and money it takes to promote their resources to these audiences.” said Harmony Faust, vice president of marketing and communications at Gale. “Our mission is to connect libraries to learners, and we are proud that our close collaboration with ACRL makes such a valuable marketing toolkit available to help our libraries more efficiently and effectively create awareness of the value and impact they bring to the communities they serve.”

To access the toolkit, visit the ACRL Libraries Transform Toolkit webpage: https://acrl.libguides.com/transform

About ACRL
The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) is the higher education association for academic libraries and library workers. Representing more than 10,000 individuals and libraries, ACRL (a division of the American Library Association) develops programs, products, and services to help those working in academic and research libraries learn, innovate, and lead within the academic community. Founded in 1940, ACRL is committed to advancing learning and transforming scholarship. Find ACRL on the web, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

About Cengage and Gale
Cengage is the education and technology company built for learners. The company serves the higher education, K-12, professional, library and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, a Cengage company, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as the modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 60 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights – where, when and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit www.gale.com.

Follow Gale on:
• Twitter - @galecengage
• Gale Blog - http://blog.gale.com/
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/GaleCengage/

DUBLIN, Ohio, 10 April 2019—Gwinnett County Public Library in Lawrenceville, Georgia, has signed on to implement OCLC Wise, the first community engagement system for U.S. public libraries.

Gwinnett County Public Library (GCPL) joins Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Anythink, in Adams County, Colorado, as an early adopter for Wise. This robust system seamlessly integrates the power of customer relationship management, marketing, and analytics with typical integrated library system (ILS) functionality, such as circulation and acquisitions. Wise transforms traditional library management with a holistic, people-centered approach—empowering library staff to better understand and meet community needs.

“GCPL is consistently pushing the boundaries of library service—from being the first library in the U.S. to provide customer self-service access outside of regular operating hours, to committing to active and inventive community engagement. We’re delighted that GCPL is joining us as a Wise early adopter,” said Skip Prichard, OCLC President and CEO.

The GCPL team has been transitioning many aspects of the organization over the past several years to transform into a true community-oriented library. Adding Wise is another significant step in that transformation.

“GCPL is excited to play a part in the ongoing development of what promises to be a revolutionary new approach to library automation and engagement, one that focuses on the customer, not the collection,” said Charles Pace, Executive Director at GCPL. “We look forward to partnering with OCLC to enhance this robust, secure system that will serve not only our needs, but the needs of the library industry more generally.”

“We’re impressed with GCPL’s dedicated efforts to innovate outreach and community partnerships, and their determination to embrace technology advancements for the benefit of their community. GCPL’s leadership and staff understand where we’re headed with Wise, and their partnership will help us get there,” said Mary Sauer-Games, OCLC Vice President, Global Product Management.

Wise is the first community engagement system for U.S. public libraries. The system is currently used by more than 75 percent of public libraries in the Netherlands and has been tailored to address the specific needs of U.S. public libraries. OCLC will work with early adopters, other public libraries, and the library community at large to help inform Wise development efforts.

OCLC is actively recruiting early adopter partnerships for Wise. This special group of libraries will work closely and collaborate with OCLC's product team to evaluate ongoing development opportunities and to shape future library innovation.

Learn more about Wise at www.oclc.org/en/wise.

About Gwinnett County Public Library
The award-winning Gwinnett County Public Library (GCPL) system was formed in 1996 after the dissolution of the Gwinnett-Forsyth Regional Library. For more than 20 years, GCPL has provided resources and services that enrich and inspire our community. The Library has 15 branches that offer free access to computers and Wi-Fi, classes, materials, and programming for people of all ages. In 2018, more than 4.5 million items were checked out at GCPL, more than any other library system in Georgia. In 2018, GCPL was recognized as a Top Workplace by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. For more information about Gwinnett County Public Library programs and services, visit www.gwinnettpl.org.

About OCLC
OCLC is a nonprofit global library cooperative providing shared technology services, original research and community programs so that libraries can better fuel learning, research and innovation. Through OCLC, member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the most comprehensive global network of data about library collections and services. Libraries gain efficiencies through OCLC’s WorldShare, a complete set of library management applications and services built on an open, cloud-based platform. It is through collaboration and sharing of the world’s collected knowledge that libraries can help people find answers they need to solve problems. Together as OCLC, member libraries, staff and partners make breakthroughs possible. www.oclc.org

Traces the History of Religious Developments and Movements Unique to America

ACRL 2019 Conference, CLEVELAND – April 10, 2019 – Gale, a Cengage company, is introducing a new digital archive that explores the history and unique character of the American religious experience. Religions of America provides scholars and researchers access to the largest resource of its kind that follows the development of religions and religious movements born in and significantly reshaped by the United States from 1820 to 1990. This never-before-digitized collection contains thousands of rare resources that opens a window for scholars and researchers onto the contemporary religious condition and its impact on modern American society and politics. Read Gale’s blog about this new archive: http://bit.ly/2FYgbsH.

Religions of America pays close attention to America’s unique role as a birthplace for new religious movements, particularly after World War II. It provides distinctive coverage of the expression of and reaction to various religious movements from Pentecostalism and Mormonism to modern Judeo-Christian organizations and non-Christian movements. It also offers robust coverage of alternative, lesser-known, but culturally important religious traditions, including New Age, Neopagan, Wicca, neo-Christianity and Christian Identity, and independent fundamentalist movements.

The archive’s wide variety of periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, pamphlets, newsletters, ephemera and visual materials lets scholars examine America’s religious life through the lens of politics, sociology, economics, psychology, women’s studies and other disciplinary perspectives. It draws on a variety of collections, including the largest multi-denominational religious collection of its kind, assembled by J. Gordon Melton, the premiere scholar of 20th-century American and Canadian religious life.

Cross searchable with other Gale Primary Sources, Religions of America comprises five unique collections:

• The American Religions Collection: Includes materials from Hebrew Christians and Pentecostal groups to Baptist organizations and Grace Gospel organizations. It features serials on neo-Pagan and occult religious traditions as well as important subject files on LGBTQ churches, church-and-state controversies, women and female spirituality and political extremism.

• The Shaker Collection: Documents the life and history of Shakers from several communities during the 18th through the early 20th centuries. Content includes correspondence, diaries, journals, photographs, community laws, church covenants, hymnals, spiritual communications, inspirational writings and drawings, lectures and speeches, as well as writings by and about members.

• The FBI Files on Jonestown, Moorish Science Temple of America, and the Branch Davidians: Explores the events surrounding the Free Peoples Temple in Jonestown; the activities of the early Black-Moslem Moorish Science Temple of America and, through reproduced negotiation transcripts, the beliefs and practices of David Koresh and his Branch Davidian followers.

• The Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda: From Brown University presents more than 30,000 pages of rare materials on Christian identity movements from its founding in the late 1940s until the 1990s.

• Utah and the Mormons: Includes periodicals, doctrinal and controversial works covering Mormon thought and history, pro- and anti-Mormon writings, and newspapers from Mormon communities.

“Religions of America allows researchers to study the unique American religious experience,” said Seth Cayley, vice president of Gale Primary Sources. “By providing a diverse range of materials on both major religious traditions and less mainstream belief systems, this remarkable archive allows researchers to explore the evolution of American religions and examine how its changed and impacted social attitudes over time.”

To provide a better research experience, Religions of America has been integrated into the Gale Digital Scholar Lab. This integration allows researchers to apply natural language processing tools to raw text data (OCR) from the collections or Gale Primary Sources archives and perform textual analysis on large corpora of historical texts. Now researchers can analyze and explore historical text more interactively, generating new research insights and content sets not previously possible.

Religions of America offers:

• access to more than half a million pages of unique and rare content, making it the largest and most comprehensive resource of its kind for the study of religions and religious movements in America.

• Thousands of research files and rare serial publications covering a variety of religious movements from Pentecostalism and Mormonism to such lesser-known religious traditions as Wicca and Neopagan.

• Cross-searching and textual analysis with Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab and Gale Primary Sources, opening new research opportunities.

Gale will showcase the Religions of America at the Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Conference, April 10-13 in Cleveland at the Gale booth #311.

To request a trial, visit the Religions of America webpage: http://bit.ly/2G7ihaN.

About Cengage and Gale
Cengage is the education and technology company built for learners. The company serves the higher education, K-12, professional, library and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, a Cengage company, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as the modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 60 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights – where, when and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit www.gale.com.

Follow Gale on:
• Twitter - @galecengage
• Gale Blog - http://blog.gale.com/
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/GaleCengage/

EBSCO Information Services Releases Music Index™ with Full Text
~ The Essential Resource for Music Scholars ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — April 9, 2019 — EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) introduces Music Index™ with Full Text to meet the increasing demand for music-related resources. Music Index™ with Full Text is an essential tool for music scholars with more than 170 full-text journals, from 1970 to the present, covering every aspect of classical and popular music.

Music Index with Full Text includes cover-to-cover indexing and abstracting for more than 600 periodicals, performance reviews, sound recordings and videos. The collection covers every genre from jazz, folk, rock, blues, country, opera and classical music to choral and band music, gospel, and electronic & experimental music. Additionally, the resource includes journals devoted to specific musical instruments including the organ, guitar, concertina, viola and tuba. Subjects covered in the database include:

• Classical Music
• Film Scores
• Music and Society
• Music and Subculture
• Music Business and Management
• Music Education
• Music History
• Music Industry
• Music Theory
• Music Therapy
• Musicology
• Performance
• Popular Music
• Vocal Performance

Designed to meet the needs of international students as well, Music Index with Full Text has a broad global perspective with content representing more than 20 languages and full-text journals from more than 30 countries including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.

EBSCO provides a wide variety of music resources that complement one another, including RILM Abstracts of Music Literature with Full Text and RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals with Full Text, and provides researchers with extensive coverage from renowned sources all on one platform.

About EBSCO Information Services
EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) is the leading discovery service provider for libraries worldwide with more than 11,000 discovery customers in over 100 countries. EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) provides each institution with a comprehensive, single search box for its entire collection, offering unparalleled relevance ranking quality and extensive customization. EBSCO is also the preeminent provider of online research content for libraries, including hundreds of research databases, historical archives, point-of-care medical reference, and corporate learning tools serving millions of end users at tens of thousands of institutions. EBSCO is the leading provider of electronic journals & books for libraries, with subscription management for more than 360,000 serials, including more than 57,000 e-journals, as well as online access to more than 1,000,000 e-books. For more information, visit the EBSCO website at: www.ebsco.com. EBSCO Information Services is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., a family owned company since 1944.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Vice President of Communications
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebsco.com