[PL-Directors] Statewide Databases

[MaryKay Dahlgreen]

Dear Academic and Public Library Directors: 
 
The State Library and Gale/Cengage Learning have signed a five-year agreement (two year contract with an option for three additional years) for a suite of 18 general periodicals and reference database products. The contract with EBSCO will expire on August 31, 2009, and all public, academic and school libraries will have access to the Gale databases before that date. 
 
This will be the first of many communications with you and the Oregon library community so I will provide some basic information in this e-mail that I hope will address your most pressing questions:
 
Gale has created a transition website that provides access to the databases, marketing and support materials, and the opportunity to sign up for webinars. The web address is: http://galesupport.com/oregon/  No username or password is required, just begin searching. This website will be updated with technical information on accessing the resources, URLs and authentication as the State Library staff works with Gale to implement the transition. Gale has also provided a chart (which I have attached to this message) that gives a side by side comparison of databases.
 
Because the annual cost of the Gale databases ($295,000) is considerably less than the amount of LSTA funds budgeted for databases in 2009-10 ($575,226), the State Library staff will be recommending to the LSTA Advisory Council and the State Library Board that the entire cost of the statewide contract be paid using LSTA funds, eliminating the need for library cost share payments.
 
State Library and Gale staff have begun transition planning and will be in contact with libraries about next steps. We will be moving as quickly as we can to transition all the libraries in August and to provide training over the next several months. 
 
We appreciate your patience with the general periodicals database procurement process. We understand that it has been frustrating to operate with limited information. We will be working very closely with Gale to make sure everyone has the information and support they need. 
 
I must close with a thank you to the Statewide Database Licensing Advisory Committee for their excellent work on this process. And a very special thank-you to Mary Finnegan, Adult Services Manager at the Corvallis-Benton County Library. She was the Chair of the SDLAC and acted with incredible grace under pressure!
 
 
If you have ANY questions or concerns, please contact me at 503-378-5012 or marykay.dahlgreen at state.or.us I will do my best to respond.
MaryKay

MaryKay Dahlgreen
Library Development Program Manager
Oregon State Library
503-378-5012
marykay.dahlgreen at state.or.us
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/pl-directors/attachments/20090731/21110339/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Database Transitions.xls
Type: application/vnd.ms-excel
Size: 193536 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/pl-directors/attachments/20090731/21110339/attachment.xls>