Gale Primary Sources Release New Archives Dedicated to Underrepresented Histories

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – March 29, 2022 – Gale, part of Cengage Group, is supporting academic initiatives in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) with the release of six new archives on the Gale Primary Sources (GPS) platform. These archives explore the stories of LGBTQ+ communities worldwide, women, Native Americans and other underrepresented communities. Gale Primary Sources provide librarians, students and scholars with historical context on controversial issues from a wide range of perspectives underscoring how the past has shaped today’s political and civil rights movements across the globe.

With the steady increase in misinformation on campus about diversity, social justice and political issues, these archives change the conversation by providing access to original historical primary sources that enable researchers and students to compare resources and make key connections. These latest archives from Gale promote open dialogue and teach critical thinking skills that inspire change and cross-cultural awareness.

 

“No other resource gives researchers more insights from more perspectives than Gale Primary Sources. The original, first-hand content is meticulously cross-referenced to bring facts into focus and information to life in remarkable new ways," said Seth Cayley, vice president of global academic product at Gale. “These new additions came from regular discussions with researchers, librarians and students who have emphasized the need to support diversity, equity and inclusion. Our work to bring these stories to life is ongoing at Gale. We are actively working on several projects that will provide a greater representation of the history of minority groups like these.”

New GPS Frontlist archives include:

• Archives of Sexuality and Gender: L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France: The fifth installment of Gale’s award-winning Archives of Sexuality and Gender series provides access to one of the most-storied, famous and sought-after private case collections in the world. The name alone invokes visions of damnation and moral ruin. L’Enfer (which translates as “Hell” or “Inferno”) refers to the library shelf mark given to the collection which was created in the 1830s to protect and isolate works that were considered contrary to the morals of the time. As with other private case archives, the entire collection was kept in a locked section of the library because of the erotic or pornographic character of the works as well as their rarity and value. While many of the more than 3,000 books – dating from the 1530s to 2010s – were consigned to the collection as morally reprehensible, the digital publication of this private case enables researchers to explore the full scope of human sexuality.

• China and the Modern World: Imperial China and the West Part II, 1865–1905: Digitized primarily from the files of the British Foreign Office contained in series FO 17, together with several volumes of law officers’ reports from the FO 83 series, this archive is a continuation of Imperial China and the West Part I, 1815–1881. It provides scholars with valuable insights into every aspect of Chinese-Western relations from 1865 to 1905, with key primary sources on international diplomacy, trade and economy, politics, military affairs, Chinese emigration and law.

• Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence, Monitoring the World: Unique for its high level of centralization and interdepartmental communication, the British intelligence and security services reached every corner of the world during a century of global conflict, high-stakes diplomacy, and political upheaval. The files cover the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and place the all-important work of signals intelligence in the Second World War alongside the central machinery of intelligence at the Cabinet Office. This unique archive provides extensive detail on the work of the GCHQ, which vital to the study of military history, intelligence and security, international politics and diplomacy in the twentieth century, and the global history of World War II.

• Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part II: The Indian Rights Association, 1882–1986: This collection provides the near-complete papers of the first organization to address Native American interests and rights. Newly digitized, it illustrates and contextualizes over a century’s worth of history of Indigenous peoples in the United States with a depth and breadth of content that is unprecedented. Because of the organization’s origins in the late 1800s, Gale’s handwritten text recognition (HTR) technology has been applied to the correspondence, enabling full-text searches of the early history of the Indian Rights Association.

• The Making of the Modern Law: Landmark Records and Briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, Part II, 1891–1950: This unique collection of legal works brings together selected and nearly impossible-to-access records and briefs from 1891 to 1950 for those cases that have most influenced research in modern American law and legal history. This collection addresses a wide range of issues through briefs filed with the U.S. Courts of Appeals on voting rights, the treatment of minority communities, political sedition, obscenity laws and workers’ rights.

• Women’s Studies Archive: Female Forerunners Worldwide: This fourth installment of the award-winning Women’s Studies Archive program focuses on individual women and organizations around the world who broke new ground in the areas of business, social reform, popular culture, health care and more. Highlights include the papers of African American women trailblazers; nursing journals from around the world, including Britain, Australia, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean; popular magazines from Australia and New Zealand; and collections concerning the women’s roles in the supernatural and crime.

These new archives are available on the Gale Primary Sources platform, enabling cross-archival searching to help users make new connections across topics. With digitization technology such as HTR, users can search the full-text of handwritten letters and manuscripts, not just the metadata, and make new discoveries. For those looking to explore even deeper insights, the archives are also available through the Gale Digital Scholar Lab. This allows researchers to apply natural language processing tools to raw text data (OCR) from the collections or Gale Primary Sources archives and perform textual analysis on large corpora of historical texts. Now researchers can analyze and explore historical text more interactively, generating new research insights and content sets not previously possible.

Gale Primary Sources is a digital research platform that brings the thoughts, words and actions of past centuries into the present for a comprehensive research experience. With authoritative content and powerful search technologies, the platform helps students and researchers examine literary, political and social culture of the last 500 years and develop a more meaningful understanding of how history continues to impact the world today. Its innovative technology improves discovery, analysis and workflow while setting the bar for digital primary source analysis and data visualization with tools like cross-archival searching and Topic Finder, which visually organizes search results to help users make new connections across topics.

For more information or to request a trial, visit the Gale Primary Sources Frontlist webpage.

About Cengage Group and Gale

Cengage Group, an education technology company serving millions of learners in 165 countries, advances the way students learn through quality, digital experiences. The company currently serves the K-12, higher education, professional, library, English language teaching and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, part of Cengage Group, provides libraries with original and curated content, as well as the modern research tools and technology that are crucial in connecting libraries to learning, and learners to libraries. For more than 65 years, Gale has partnered with libraries around the world to empower the discovery of knowledge and insights – where, when and how people need it. Gale has 500 employees globally with its main operations in Farmington Hills, Michigan. For more information, please visit www.gale.com.

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