I was asked to post on hit on this. I received 7 responses and it
seemed pretty evenly divided. I am planning on dropping the expensive
Gale product and trying Ebsco's for one year (free to the school) and
will evaluate after next year. Read on for specifics...Thanks, Sara
From Texas: I've used both. When Gale was bought by our state
legislature for all school libraries, we used Gale. When our state
legislature dropped the ball, and we had to buy our own databases, I
went with EBSCO. EBSCO is geared SLIGHTLY more toward college and
business use. Gale is SLIGHTLY more geared to high schoolers. It is a
toss up. The differences are certainly not worth $3000.00.
From California: I trialed Ebsco's Student Research Center last month
pretty thoroughly, and in my mind, it does not hold a candle to Gale's
SRC Gold. Gale is deeper, easier to use, and more comprehensive.
Not sure which state...My personal/professional opinion would be that
if you were able to take the EBSCO database as a "free" database for
your school's library, it would certainly provide as much (or more)
content in various areas other than just popular journals/periodicals.
You have a wide-variety of resources in EBSCO that you don't have in
Gale. Even while you might be missing out on a few titles, you may
actually find that you have supplemented titles/subjects in other areas.
I would check, though, to see if your users have specific journals
(that can now be found on Gale) that you don't see in EBSCO. If you
find that they need these for a project each year, you may want to keep
the Gale database. However, if you find that it really doesn't matter
what is available (contents or titles), then EBSCO would be a great
alternative...and the price is right!
From Virginia: We have both databases and personally I like Gale
better--I think it tends to have more in-depth resources, particularly
useful for AP/IB students. However, I do think EBSCO is a good all
around source, especially for newspapers and magazines, and the price is
certainly right.
From Oklahoma: I have never used Gale's product, but Oklahoma has had
EBSCOhost products free to library users (paid for by state funds) for
about 6 years now. It is wonderful. The new upgrades keep getting
better. I can't imagine something being better than this "no cost to
us" product.
From Texas: Just comment: Here in Texas we et access to this as well
as 15 other databases in a TX package of databases. It is my
understanding that Gale offers this package; it is not funded by state
funds. I get all 16 including Student Resource Center Gold for $400.00
per year. If I were you, I'd call my Gale rep. and ask for
help...bottom line pricing, a package deal, etc. (see the
possibilities). Tell him what you are thinking of doing! Although I
don't really know this EBSCO database, I'd probably give it a try!
Sara Johnson, IMC Coordinator
D. C. Everest Senior High IMC
Schofield, WI 54476
sjohnson@dce.k12.wi.us
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