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Last Updated: May 03, 2023

For WSL: 15 Minutes to Mastery: Expand Research Skills with Gale's Highlights and Notes

Gale’s Highlights and Notes helps users develop and expand their research skills. In this 15 minutes to mastery session recording for the Washington State Library resources, we share best practices and unique ideas for using the Highlights and Notes tool to support researchers of all levels.

Duration: 15 Minutes
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Here we go!

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Welcome to your 15 min, mastery training. Today's training is expand research skills with Gale's high-levels and notes this training is for the Washington State Library, and my name is Tammi Burke.

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I'm your Gale trainer. Today we will be focusing on just one of the many tools and features you have that are shared across all of your Gale resources.

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Today we are focusing on highlights and notes and I will be sharing with you not only how to use this tool, but also best practices for using this tool.

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We always start with access to the Washington State Library. Gale resource, and then I will share with you just to give you some background information, and understanding of the highlights and notes feature, and then we will spend the majority of our time exploring how that feature, works and again sharing those best practices any

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questions that you may have after the training session. You will have my contact information and also content information to your Gale customer success, managers.

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They're your one-on-one support and all things scale, and we'll leave you with that. At the end of today's session.

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So first accessing your Washington State Library resources, you can access through this site if you go to the support site that we've built for the Washington State Library, it will take you to this page.

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Once you land in this, on this page, you can simply type in your library name and or school name, and then click, proceed.

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And once you do, you will be taken to all of your direct Urls for your individual library or school site, and all of them are available here.

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You can export those links, utilizing this export link tool over to the right.

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It'll create a spreadsheet for you, and you can grab all those direct urls and put them right on your library website or wherever you're users are learning.

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So let's talk a little bit about Gale's highlights and notes before I model this tool for you.

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So highlights and notes is a feature that you can utilize at the document level.

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So once you are at the document level, you'll be able to select text from a document and highlight those important sections.

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We have a variety of colors to select from, and you can add those notes and save highlights and notes where they can then be accessed or exported and it'll live up here in the upper right hand corner. Once you've done some highlighting you'll see that this changes

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from 0 to however, many highlights you have on this article, and that's also where you will access all of the highlights and notes.

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And I'm gonna model that for you another item. I want to point out when you are doing some highlighting that you may see, and that's the defined button define will give you a page out of the Webster's dictionary as you are seeing on the right hand side here, so if

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there is a term that one of your users is struggling with just like you can in any E.

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Reader, you can highlight it, and it will give you a page in out of the Webster's Dictionary to give you that that name, that excellent at the explanation of that name from the dictionary.

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So it's really helpful tool to have, especially because these are non, or these are reference nonfiction resources.

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So some of the terms can be a little bit challenging, especially for our students to save and share highlights and notes, so not only can you highlight documents within this resource, but then you may want to keep that information that's the ultimate goal. Right?

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So what can you do? You can save those annotated documents to Google drive or Microsoft onedrive.

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We have 2 different areas. Either the quick send area here or we haven't our contextual toolbar at the top.

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The sun, too. Little paper, airplane, and that toolbar sticks with you as you scroll down the page.

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When you do, send your document. Let's say you're sending it to Google.

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Drive, and you've marked it up, and this is a best practice.

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I always share, if you've marked up any documents to please send that entire document somewhere.

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This is what it would look like, so you would have the document highlighted in exactly the same spots, with the same colors.

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Not only that the citation goes with you when you send it to your Google drive, or Microsoft on drive.

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You also have email download and print available, and when you send it the highlights and notes will live below the citation.

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So you'll have them here in the document, but then, also below that citation, you'll have this chunk of blue text, and then any notes that you've taken, so you'll have all of that in one document.

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Now you can also choose to email it when you email the document that you've marked up.

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This is exactly what it looks like. You can email it to whomever you need to.

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You have all of the information there. The source citation information is also on this page, so you'll have all of that is as an option.

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After using highlights and notes to send that entire document.

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Now, what also happens is as you're marking up those documents again.

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Best practice, always do something with the entire document. So you have it somewhere where you're keeping it.

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But this section is being built out. This is the highlights and Notes section, and it is session based.

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And what you will find here is just those highlighted sections of text you'll have the article name.

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You'll have the highlighted sections of text any notes you've taken, the bibliography, and you have the ability to just send what I like to call digital notes.

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These digital notes to Google Microsoft email download or print.

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And then your citation tool is also available here on this page.

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Along with, when we were at the article level, but you also have the ability to label the content.

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So that's an option that you have available here at the top.

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I will model that for you today, but you can label or create a legend.

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As you're seeing here for the sections that you've highlighted when you send it to your, let's say, Google, drive.

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This is what you're going to see you'll have highlights and notes.

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There's your legend, and you have all that information.

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Including your notes available.

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With that, let's jump into the resource. Please let me know if you have any questions but we're going to use and again, this is a shared tool and feature across all your Gale resources.

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So today, we are going to use global issues and this is one of the in context resources you have available from the Washington State Library.

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A global issues is, looks at the procon of the viewpoint is from a global viewpoint.

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So you're looking at hot social topics and issues and some controversial issues, too.

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And you're looking at it from that global point of view.

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So I'm not going to touch into too much here, because our focus up for this 15 min is strictly on one of the tools and features.

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So let me go directly to an article, and we are actually going to use our space exploration.

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When it is one of our featured issues of intrus.

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This month, it is actually I think it's the third one. There.

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It is so I'm going to use the topic. Page of space xoration.

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And we're going to explore this topic.

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And all of our topic pages are curated, collections of information where you have an image and an essay overview, and then below, you have all of your content.

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So featured content is hand selected information by our content editors, and since we are in global issues, you actually have a viewpoints, content type.

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And so we are going to go into viewpoints today.

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But you can see you have primary sources and periodical content and multimedia content.

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All available here academic journals, all your peer review journals are going to be in your academic journals.

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We're going to go into viewpoints, viewpoints are great because they provide you with an article, but also article commentary.

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Now, if I wanted to filter this information down, maybe I wanted to filter it to the newest information I'm going to sort by newest, and I'm actually going to use this U.S.A. today article to model how to use highlights.

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And notes. So again you do need to be at the document level or at the article level.

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To utilize this tool. Now you're seeing a here in the upper right hand corner, as I mentioned in the Powerpoint Highlights and Notes, lives in this contextual toolbar, even on the homepage.

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You're going to see highlights and notes, but it has 0.

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So if I click on it, I am going to get a message that there's no highlights and notes to display at that time, so I will need to highlight something with this document.

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Now, if I were let's say I've highlighted a little bit on this document, and then I switch and go into another one.

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I see this message I can still view all highlights and notes.

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I don't have to be on a document that I've that I've highlighted on to view that other screen.

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I do have to do some highlighting to have something there to view, though, so let me share that with you, and it really is quite simple.

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You just click and drag over a chunk of text. And I this article is a great article.

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It's about, and it's written by by Peggy Whitson, and I wanted to share this one because it's talking about how she's going to be the first woman to command a private mission to the International Space Station.

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This spring so exciting information. So exciting information, but also it talks about her influence, and it also talks about her.

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How she was trying for a number of years. She didn't it didn't just happen overnight.

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It was 9 years of her applying for this position, and being turned down but it's a great article from her point of view, but also talking about that space exploration.

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So here I've hlighted a chunk of text.

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I'm going to select a color. I can add any notes.

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And this is going. I'll just maybe make a note about Peggy's.

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Education.

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And I'm going to save it now. Once you've done some marking up, and I'm just going to grab another couple sections here, as I'm explaining to you once you've marked up the document again.

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Best practice. Send that entire document somewhere so you don't lose it.

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This may just be some extra notes. I want our fax.

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I also have remember I had mentioned. If there's a term I'm struggling with, I can use the define button.

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I just click and drag over that text. And instead of choosing a color, I would click, define a color. I would click, define.

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And there I have my information from the Webster's Dictionary.

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Okay. So I've highlighted a couple chunks of text.

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Now again. Best practice. I'm going to send this my contextual toolbar sticks with me as I scroll down the page so I don't have to scroll back up to get to the quick send options that are here.

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But I can just you quickly click on. Send to, and I can send this to my Google drive.

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Now I'm already signed in so what'll happen is it will create a folder on my Google drive titled Gale In context, global issues.

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So I'll have that nice folder and every time I'm in this resource and send information to my Google drive, it'll always land in that folder.

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Now it is going to be marked up so exactly what I highlighted will go directly into that folder if I wanted to share this let's say I'm a teacher, and I wanted to share this with my students.

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I wanted to share this marked up document with my students.

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You will need to send it somewhere. You can even email or download or print, but send it somewhere.

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Here's the sent to options, and then share it with your students.

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If you use the get link tool, that tool will take you back to this article, but it's not going to save what you've marked up.

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You don't create an account on your gale resources.

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So if you've marked up a document and you want to use that, maybe you're doing a mini lesson on annotating or claim evidence and reasoning, and you're utilizing this tool that's something that you can do.

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And then send it against. And send it somewhere, and then share it with your students, and let me go back to our viewpoints.

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Actually, let's go back to space exploration. Let's go into biographies this time.

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And I am just going to choose this first one. It's a very, very brief article, and just highlight.

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A chunk of text I'm not going to add any notes into this one.

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Again, best practice. Send this and I could use audio option.

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The paper airplane, or the quick. Send option, since it's a quick, short document.

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It's right here it's easy to use. I've had teachers share that they like to use this tool for parts of speech.

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It's great for collaboration. And let me go to my highlights in notes and talk to you a little bit more about this.

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So I've highlighted on this document. I've sent it.

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So I have the entire document, but I also have these digital notes, and this is session based this information.

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That's why best practice keep the entire mark up document.

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So at least you have that in case you forget or your users or students forget to come in to the highlights and notes and do something with that information.

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That's what this warning is. Right here but it's a great way for your users to collaborate.

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It's fantastic for researchers of all levels, because they can digitally highlight exactly what they want and pull these digital notes together.

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I've also had special Ed teachers and teachers that are working with English learners that find that this tool is really helpful to help Chunk that text because you do have access to elementary resources, too.

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And this is a shared tool and feature. So keep that in mind.

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Now, if I were to send this, I can quickly send it to Google Microsoft email.

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I can download. I can print what I love, too, is my bibliography is attached.

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So if I send this my bibliography will go with it wherever I choose to send it to.

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But I also have my citation tool. So if you have users that have been highlighting throughout their session, they can grab their bibliography or works cited.

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Page right here. They can export it as they can always with the citation toolb.

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But here they have every single citation from all the articles that they've highlighted in, and they can send it to noodle tools or easy bib.

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Our copy and paste, they can change the format just as C always can with your citation tool.

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So it works the same way. The last thing I wanna share with you is creating that legend.

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So I do have the ability to add labels here, and it only shows me the colors I use yellow, green, and blue, and this is, I think this was her education, and I can label these whatever I want.

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Maybe these are facts I could see I use a couple of these very, very often, and then when I click, save that legend will go with my digital notes wherever I choose to send it.

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Okay. And not only that, but this article. And let's say I send this to my Google, drive this article from my Google drive will be hyperlinked out so I could come back to this article.

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Now, my highlights are going to be saved there, but maybe I want to use the information on the explore panel, because there's great articles of the more like this panel is going to be really helpful.

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Maybe that's how I want to use it and take that path back.

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This is one that I'm using. And I want to find more related to it.

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So another opportunity. I also like with the digital notes. It's a great way to check in when you are working with students of all levels to see where they're at with their research, they can easily, from their if they're using Google drive or Microsoft onetrive share these digital notes with their teacher teacher can

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make notes on them, and they can work together again. I mentioned collaboration.

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Imagine collaborating with your colleagues, or any any other small groups that may be.

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Students are working with faculty members that are working with students at the higher Ed level.

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This is a great tool that can be utilized. Last thing I want to mention is, you do have the ability to edit your notes.

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So before you send it, you can edit your notes for our younger users.

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This is great when they're talking about putting words or putting contexts into their own words.

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Plagiarism, right? They can do that right here in real time, and they can edit their notes and save them, and then send that information.

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So just another tool to help you develop or expand those research skills.

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Let me know if you have any questions. I am going to share with you.

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Where are you can go for additional support, and that's your Gale support site.

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And this is where you're going to find all of your access.

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Urls. I shared a little bit of that at the beginning, but also icons and widgets.

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The ability to contact your gale customer, success manager in the training center.

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You're going to find tip sheets and tutorials recorded.

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Webinars. Resource guides, and even our upcoming webinars for the Washington State Library, looking for marketing materials to promote your resources.

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We have you covered there's bookmarks and posters and social media posts all ready to go for you.

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So please let me know if there's any questions I will leave you with this page.

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If you're looking to connect with your K. 12 or public customer success manager, their email address is here.

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If you're looking to connect with your academic customer success manager there, email addresses here.

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If you happen to write the wrong one down or your screenshotting this, it's okay.

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We all work together, and we'll make sure you get the right support that you need.

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My name is Tammi Burke. I'm your senior trainer from Gale, and I thank you so much for your time today.

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I hope you join us again in the future, as we will have some upcoming trainings ready and available at for the Washington State Library.

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I will say on if there's any additional questions. Thank you. Everyone.
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