Discovering History Through Digital Newspaper Collections

Posted on March 2, 2016

By Seth Cayley

Can cocaine really cure sea-sickness? Something tells me that very little peer-reviewed research has been done on the subject in recent years. But that didn’t stop the Victorians. From around 1870-1915 a large number of narcotics, including heroin, were widely and legally available, and often packaged as medicines. Historians have dubbed this period before the first international drug control treaties as “The Great Binge”.

I first came across The Great Binge when browsing through bound volumes of the Illustrated London News for the first time at university. While I was supposed to be looking for news items about pre-First World War Europe, my eyes kept on being drawn to the adverts. Leafing through these, I learnt that: smoking Joy’s cigarettes could help with bronchitis; a certain brand of men’s underwear does not shrink; and that an electric hairbrush could cure my “nervous headache” (although I was pretty certain my headache that day had other causes common to students).

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Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity: What is It?

Posted February 24, 2016

By Robert L. Lisiecki

As you may or may not know, Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, recently released a new primary source collection, Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940This collection brings together approximately 1.5 million pages of primary sources and is perfect for students, educators, and researchers looking for the largest available, accessible collection materials supporting Women, Gender, LGBTQ, and Sexuality studies.

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When News Breaks, Library Users Can Stay Informed with Gale’s Periodical Collections

Posted 2/24/2016

By Sara Constantakis, Senior Content Developer, Journal Aggregation, Gale

When news hits the headlines, the flood of information begins immediately. Gale’s InfoTrac collections–like Academic OneFile, General OneFile, and InfoTrac Newsstand–rise above the rest to bring users timely and curated content from the world’s leading magazines, journals, and news sources. When a hot topic is racing around the headlines, InfoTrac’s highly responsive subject indexing quickly connects users with the most up-to-date and relevant information.

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DK Eyewitness Travel Top Architectural Cities for 2016

Posted on February 23, 2016

Originally Posted by Helena Smith, DK Eyewitness Travel Blog

Steeped in history, effortlessly stylish, loud, or lavish – a city’s architectural highlights build its very character. From New York City’s geometric skyscrapers to the ancient wonders of Rome, discover some of DK’s Eyewitness Travel top cities for 2016 one fascinating building at a time.

Below are just the top three.

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Explore Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes through first-hand accounts and fictional works from the twentieth century.

Posted on February 22, 2016

 

Guided by a five-person advisory board of distinguished scholars, Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes spans multiple disciplines, including history, literature and language.  Examine what life was like during the twentieth century under totalitarian rule. This set holds a wealth of information for various college courses and also high school teachers encouraging the analysis of primary and secondary sources.

Learn more about Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes with Editor-in-chief Peter Fritzsche, PhD., as he introduces the series’ distinctive approach.

 

Read moreExplore Histories of Everyday Life in Totalitarian Regimes through first-hand accounts and fictional works from the twentieth century.

The Ever-changing State of Literary Criticism

Posted on February 18, 2016

By Larry Trudeau

I was recently reviewing an entry on Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations for an upcoming volume of Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism (NCLC), and was surprised—delighted, really—to see that we were including two reviews of the novel from 1861, the year it was published in book form.

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Update Your Collection with the Latest Editions of Two Best-Selling Directories

Posted on February 10, 2016 The Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media, 152nd Edition is now available. Valuable to researchers seeking descriptions, contact information and advertising rates on print/online media worldwide, this directory now covers 53,000 listings. These include newspapers, magazines, journals, radio and TV stations and cable stations and systems. Publishing this month, the Encyclopedia of Associations–International Organizations, … Read more

2016 OAT Award Winning: Associated Press Collections Online

Published on February

Associated Press Collections Online, by Gale, part of Cengage Learning, was recently announced for inclusion in Choice’s annual Outstanding Academic Title list!  The Associated Press Collections Online resource will be recognized in the January 2016 issue of Choice Magazine, a publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries. This is an accomplishment Gale takes great pride in, as this year’s Outstanding Academic Title list includes 606 books and electronic resources chosen by the Choice editorial staff from among some 6,500 titles reviewed last year.  Of the titles selected, a mere 20 are electronic with one being the Associated Press Collections Online resource!  Titles are selected for their excellence in scholarship and presentation, the significance of their contribution, and their value as important – often the first – treatment of their subject.

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New LGBTQ Digital Archive Collection Just Released–Trial Now

Posted February 8, 2016

by Jessica Bomarito, Acquisitions Editor, Gale

Gale Digital Collections

Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940

With material drawn from hundreds of institutions and organizations, including both major international activist organizations and local, grassroots groups, the documents in the Archives of Human Sexuality and Identity: LGBTQ History and Culture since 1940 present important aspects of LGBTQ life in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. The archive illuminates the experiences not just of the LGBTQ community as a whole, but of individuals of different races, ethnicities, ages, religions, political orientations, and geographical locations that constitute this community. Historical records of political and social organizations founded by LGBTQ individuals are featured, as well as publications by and for lesbians and gays, and extensive coverage of governmental responses to the AIDS crisis. The archive also contains personal correspondence and interviews with numerous LGBTQ individuals, among others. The archive includes gay and lesbian newspapers from more than 35 countries, reports, policy statements, and other documents related to gay rights and health, including the worldwide impact of AIDS, materials tracing LGBTQ activism in Britain from 1950 through 1980, and more.

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Celebrate the Chinese New Year with Gale Primary Sources

Posted on February 8, 2015

By Masaki Morisawa

CNY1

“… the blessed Chinese New Year has come round, the Post Office has ceased to function, the office boy has burned his fingers lighting fire crackers and the door between my office and the Depot is locked; the doorkeeper has gone home with the key ….”

So writes John Darroch, a British missionary, in the March 1933 issue of The Chinese Recorder, one of the seventeen English-language journals published in or about China that will be included in the upcoming digital collection China from Empire to Republic: Missionary, Sinology, and Literary Periodicals 1817-1947.

Read moreCelebrate the Chinese New Year with Gale Primary Sources