April 2015 Vendor Partner Interview: Susan Gall, Lincoln Library Press, Inc.

At WiLS, we want to bring valuable information to our library partners, including information about the missions and big ideas of the vendors they may already do business with.  Each month, WiLS will interview a vendor partner in order to bridge the gap and open the door to valuable collaborations.  This month, we are delighted to share insights from Susan Gall, co-owner (with her husband, Tim Gall) of Lincoln Library Press, Inc.

These interviews are part of a series of interviews with both WiLS library and vendor partners.  Your feedback is appreciated.  If you have any to offer on this article, or suggestions for upcoming interviews, contact Andrea Coffin at .

Tell us about your company’s background.

Our company was originally named Eastword Publications Development. When my business partner (and husband) and I launched our business in 1992, we were book producers. Publishers hired us to develop titles. We were a turnkey operation, taking a project from an initial idea all the way through to finished pages for the printer and SGML files for online publication. We specialized in multivolume sets for libraries. We developed several dozen titles for Gale Research, now Cengage. We worked on Gale and UXL versions of the Worldmark and Jr. Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, The Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology, Cities of the World, Notable Asian Americans, Women’s Firsts, Chronology of Women’s History, and many more.

In 1998 we decided to become a publisher and to produce our own titles. We began by acquiring the rights to publish the Lincoln Library titles, including the acclaimed multivolume Lincoln Library of Sports Champions and Lincoln Library of Essential Information, a single-volume encyclopedia first published in 1924. We published new editions of both titles and expanded the Lincoln Library line with a seven volume set, Lincoln Library of Shapers of Society, and a five-volume set on Greek & Roman Mythology–which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for excellence in editorial and book design. With the success of those titles we changed the name of our company to Lincoln Library.

In 2009, we launched FactCite: Lincoln Library Online – as an enhancement to Lincoln Library print titles. However, the site took on a life of its own. In 2013, Library Media Connection/ARBA named FactCite “Best Overall Reference K-12” in their Best in Reference Awards. Subscriptions were growing exponentially, and in 2014, we made the decision to stop publishing books and to focus on FactCite.

Why do you, personally, choose to work with libraries?

We have been in love with libraries our entire lives. My business partner has particularly fond memories of one of his first jobs–as a page at the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library. At one point or another he shelved books in every department, learning to “read the stacks” and stumbling across all sorts of great books. (He likes to tell the story about the time the pages spiked the punch at a staff party, and then hid the empty bottle in a part of the stacks they knew was infrequently visited.) The main branch of Cleveland Public Library was, and continues to be, a magical place.

I share his enthusiasm for libraries. I am a longtime member and former president of the Friends of the Shaker Library in the community where we live. One memorable accomplishment during my tenure was a multigenerational quilting project. Adult quilters and children worked together to create a quilted wall hanging inspired by Jack Prelutsky’s poem, “Children, Children Everywhere.” The quilt adorns the soffit of the children’s room in the branch library – and a framed letter from Jack Prelutsky celebrating the project hangs nearby.

A librarian who knows the best books to read and who can direct someone to the best sources of information is invaluable. Librarians are inspiring for their intellectual curiosity and for their fierce defense of every student’s right to learn. (Our daughter Lizzie is head of youth services at the Grand Rapids Public Library in Michigan. Need I say more?)

What do you like to know about the libraries you work with?  What helps you better understand their needs?

We like to think of our customers (students, teachers, and librarians) as our partners. We work hard to get to know them and to learn what they need. We ask what students are studying and how we can do a better job of providing them with appropriate and challenging material.

To make it easy for our subscribers to provide input, we have built-in ways for students to send us feedback. At the end of every FactCite article is a link that enables readers to tell us what they think. We love the feedback, even when it is a little off topic, like the one below:

<> = to HAHAHAHA!!!!

While the comments come to us anonymously, we do know which school or public library sent the comment. This helps us address the needs of students who are struggling or can’t find what they are looking for. We can contact the librarian in an effort to help. For example, a user may send a comment such as “this should be longer” or “what happened next?” If we agree, we will expand the article. Our editors love responding to student comments, and sometimes we post expanded articles within a day.

Our librarian customers tell us that it is empowering for students when the librarian is able to show them that their input helped improve FactCite. We are all in a community of learning and we like to think that our role can make a difference. What we really cherish are comments like the following:

awesome !

What big ideas are being worked on at your company?  What problems are being solved?

We are constantly looking for ways to improve FactCite. In addition to our Lincoln Library content, we’ve partnered with two other publishers to bring online editions of their print products under the FactCite umbrella. For younger researchers, we’ve added Biography for Beginners, which was a popular print product for elementary schools until 2012 and is now a popular resource on FactCite. In November 2014, we launched Defining Moments in U.S. History Online, based on the 30-volume (and growing) print series from Omnigraphics. The addition of Defining Moments substantially increased our content on American History for students in middle and high schools.

Subscribers asked us for audio read along, so we added that feature. It helps younger readers and ESL/ELL students with the text. We have improved the page design to reduce scrolling. We are committed to keeping FactCite accessible for all researchers, so our screens are distraction-free. As one librarian wrote, “students like that FactCite is easy to read and uncluttered, yet still includes photos and other graphics.”

For next school year, we’ll be introducing some new features that will make FactCite even more fun for student researchers.

How can librarians become partners in product or training development?

Our “send a comment” feature at the end of every FactCite article makes it easy for subscribers to function as our partners. Librarians regularly send us suggestions, such as lists of biographies or the outline of a country report assignment, so that we can consider adding profiles or country facts not currently included in FactCite.

Do you have anything else you’d like to share? 

We exhibited for the first time at WEMTA this year – and enjoyed meeting our customers and prospective customers. We have subscribers from Appleton to Rhinelander, from Eau Claire to Tomahawk, from Clayton to Winneconne. FactCite databases are affordable and accessible to students of all reading levels. FactCite displays well on Chromebooks, smartphones, tablets, and Internet-enabled e-readers, and is a low bandwidth resource that works well when an entire class is online simultaneously. And we do not have voicemail – when you call (800) 516-2656 you will always reach a person!