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A Remarkable Review for Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History

History is not just a list of dates and events. But history taught well is vibrant, relevant, and engaging. And nothing brings history to life like primary sources that give students a close-up look at history as it unfolded.

Gale and Smithsonian have partnered to deliver an online resource that includes unique and seminal primary sources, including documents, maps, historical objects, and other materials from the museums and archives from the collections of the Smithsonian and from Gale’s leading digital collections: Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History.

Designed for use by both teachers and librarians, this resource from Gale supports core and Advanced Placement U.S. history programs. Primary source images are hand-curated by scholars at the Smithsonian – experts who have a unique knowledge of U.S. history as seen through the Smithsonian’s valuable collections and shaped for the school curriculum by an advisory board of teachers.

See how a reviewer feels about the collection of Primary Sources:

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Bridging the Gap Between Quantitative and Qualitative Research in Digital Newspaper Archives

by Thomas Smits on DIGITAL HUMANITIES NOW Since the early 2000s, humanities 3.0, as Rens Bod has called it, was posited as being able to discover new patterns, mostly over long periods of time, that were overlooked by traditional qualitative approaches. A study by a team of academics led by Professor Nello Christianini of the University of … Read more

Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History: “A Treasure Trove”

History is not just a list of dates and events. But history taught well is vibrant, relevant, and engaging. And nothing brings history to life like primary sources that give students a close-up look at history as it unfolded.

Gale and Smithsonian have partnered to deliver an online resource that includes unique and seminal primary sources, including documents, maps, historical objects, and other materials from the museums and archives from the collections of the Smithsonian and from Gale’s leading digital collections: Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History.

Designed for use by both teachers and librarians, this resource from Gale supports core and Advanced Placement U.S. history programs. Primary source images are hand-curated by scholars at the Smithsonian – experts who have a unique knowledge of U.S. history as seen through the Smithsonian’s valuable collections and shaped for the school curriculum by an advisory board of teachers.

See how a reviewer feels about the collection of Primary Sources.

Read moreSmithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History: “A Treasure Trove”

The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000: A “Must-have”

Provide multi-disciplinary research with a fully-searchable digital archive of what was once the world’s largest selling newspaper. The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000 provides a fascinating picture of politics, society, and culture through approximately one million pages of the newspaper’s backfile. Offering a balance of personal interest stories alongside incisive analysis, The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000 delivers a fascinating glimpse into daily life as it was experienced over the past 150 years.

Get more details with a review:

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Marching Towards Equality

During LGBTQ history month, we celebrate this community and the wide impact its members have had on society, culture, and the larger world. One key event in LGBTQ history in the United States is the October 14, 1979, march on Washington, which essentially launched the national gay and lesbian rights movement. To celebrate the anniversary of this milestone event, Gale is highlighting key primary sources that provide deeper knowledge about the march taken from Gale’s new Archives of Sexuality & Gender. This important, rich resource provides rare and unique primary source information about gender and sexuality. It helps scholars and students gain unparalleled insight and understanding about all facets of the community, including LBGTQ history, activism, and related social, political, health, and legal issues and topics.

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Access Groundbreaking LGBTQ Resources Using Innovative Tools

As public awareness and academic interests expand to include LGBTQ issues, libraries and researchers are finding an alarming lack of resources available to support their studies.  Gale’s new Archives of Sexuality & Gender, the largest collection of resources available to support the study of gender and sexuality, was introduced earlier this year to address a dearth of information on sexuality.  This rich archive helps scholars and others make new connections in LGBTQ history and activism, cultural studies, psychology, health, political science, policy studies, and other related areas of research.

Read moreAccess Groundbreaking LGBTQ Resources Using Innovative Tools

Join Us In Celebrating LGBT History Month.

October is LGBT History Month – a month focused on celebrating the achievements of 31 lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender icons. In celebration, we’ll be highlighting LGBTQ milestones and historical icons, and sharing a sneak peek of historical documents from our primary source archive, the Archives of Sexuality & Gender. Be sure to visit our … Read more

Binge-worthy Primary Sources You’ll Love

The public library is a place for creativity and innovation, a place for civil discourse and debate, a place for dialogue, and conversation. It’s where diverse groups of people can pursue curiosity.

Be the top-of-mind resource for all of your patrons’ discovery needs and empower learning and discovery.

Better support your patron’s curiosity about LGBTQ history and activism, nineteenth-century America, and American prose fiction from 1774-1920 with one-time purchase archives.

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New Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History: Lively, First Person, and Real

Posted on May 26, 2016

Primary sources have been called snippets of history – small windows that show a picture of one moment in time. A letter, a memoir, a personal account – each provides a unique, often personal perspective. And when they are put together in a meaningful way, they create a full and rich picture of historical events, people, and developments while supporting national learning standards.

By directly engaging with artifacts and individual records, students can explore, analyze, and delve more deeply into a topic.  In addition, primary sources help students:

  • Develop critical thinking skills by examining meaning, context, bias, purpose, point of view, and more.
  • Pursue independent learning as they construct knowledge by interacting with sources that represent different accounts of the same event/topic.
  • Understand how viewpoints and biases affect interpretation of history.

Read moreNew Smithsonian Primary Sources in U.S. History: Lively, First Person, and Real

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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