Gale News and Teams

The Punchy One-Liner! The Daily Mirror’s Tabloid Evolution

by

|By Rachel Holt, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources|

In January 2026 Gale Primary Sources will be updating The Mirror Historical Archive with five more years of historical British journalism, bringing the newspaper into the millennium. To mark that we will be exploring some traits that the Daily Mirror is best known for, its populist and accessible tone plus its sensational headlines combined with human interest stories and strong visuals.

The Daily Mirror has a long history of publishing headlines that not only catch the eye but resonate with the British public and linger in our collective, social memory. Each of these iconic front pages reflects a moment when the Daily Mirror’s journalism intersected with public emotion and tracks the newspapers evolution to the tabloid we know it to be today.

Read more

China in Print: Two Centuries of English-Language Reporting, 1827-1974

by

│By Lindsay Whitaker-Guest, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

Gale Primary Sources has recently released its latest addition to the groundbreaking series China and the Modern World. China and the Modern World: The English Language Press in China, 1827-1974 features 25 English-language newspapers and periodicals published over the course of 150 years of immense change and transformation in China.

These newspapers and periodicals played a significant role in the cultural and political life of major Chinese cities, offering critical and diverse reporting on milestone events. In this post I will delve into these newly digitised titles and discuss some of the stories and insights which can be researched through this unique new resource.

Read more

The Making of Marriage Law: Insights from Colonial Kenya

by

| By Lindsay Whitaker-Guest, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources |

Gale Primary Sources recently released its latest module in the landmark legal history series, The Making of Modern Law. The Making of Modern Law: British Colonial Law: Acts, Ordinances, and Proclamations from the Colonies, 1900-1989 contains legislation from all corners of the British Empire and was digitised from the Colonial Office collections held at the National Archives in the UK.

The legislation in the archive covers all aspects of colonial life in a century which saw British-held territories transformed by war, disease, rebellion, and decolonisation. However, for this post we will examine how the empire governed one fundamental aspect of domestic life: marriage.

Read more

Coming Soon: Global Politics and US Foreign Policy: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1918–2000

by

│By Clem Delany, Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

December 2025 will see the launch of a new digital archive, Global Politics and US Foreign Policy: The Council on Foreign Relations, 1918–2000.

This is the digitisation of material from the Studies Department, Records of Groups, and the Records of Meetings of the Council on Foreign Relations, a non-partisan, independent US think tank focused on the international relations of the United States and its role in the world.

This role, and public perceptions of it, has altered greatly throughout the twentieth century, from the isolationist principles of the 1920s and 30s, to the American engagement in WWII and subsequent support in Allied recovery processes, to the Cold War, global anti-communist fears, and the growth of American soft power. In 2025, many of the programs of the United States Agency for International Development (established in 1961 and a key tool of US soft power) were shut down and a new phase of US international relations began.

Read more

Terra Nullius: The Legacy of “The Land of No One”

by

│By Oralkhanova Alima, Year 11 Student at Nazarbaev Intellectual School in Semey, Kazakhstan│

In an era when concerns about overpopulation and scarcity of natural resources are rising, it may seem paradoxical that certain areas of land remain unclaimed and unwanted. Even today, when countries continue to engage in territorial disputes and conflicts, there still exist regions that have been ignored by the international community. To describe such territories, early international law introduced a specific term – terra nullius, a Latin expression meaning “the land of no one”. Although this term is no longer officially used, the concept of terra nullius continues to captivate people’s minds.

Read more

Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility Through the Times Digital Archive

by

│By Brendon Ndoro, Gale Ambassador at the University of Cape Town│

When does one acknowledge the impact of their decisions on society? How does one remedy their wrongdoings? When does one act in response to the threat their actions bring upon the welfare and sustainability of society and the environment?

These are a few questions Business Studies students may come across when delving into the world of business ethics. A great starting point to answering questions like these lies in understanding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR is an ongoing practice in the world of business. It is a management concept focusing on the integration of social and environmental concerns into a business’s operations and relationships with various stakeholders.

Read more

Collisions: Driving Through Digital Humanities in Search of Roadkill

by

│By Gilberto Mazzoli, ESEH-Gale Fellow│

In 2024 I have been one of four recipients of the ESEH-Gale Fellowship in Digital Environmental Humanities. This fellowship has been a good opportunity to explore some aspects of my research in environmental history in a different way and helped to make my current research more visible.

This fellowship not only allowed me to access for seven months, numerous online Gale Primary Sources archives related to the environmental history of the United States and to experiment with tools contained in the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, but enabled me to develop a part of my research project related to the creation of digital interactive maps. This pushed me to learn new technical skills, like GIS, and to think differently about some aspects of my research in environmental history.

In this brief account I reflect on my first experience with digital humanities and on the challenges faced during my research.

Read more

G is for Golden Age: Exploring a Golden Age of Children’s Literature with Gale’s Nineteenth Century Collections Online

by

│By Elizabeth Gaglio, Academic Customer Success Specialist│

The nineteenth century is known as a “Golden Age” of children’s literature. Advancements in printing and new views on childhood transformed the genre that was overwhelmingly moral and didactic, finally allowing for tales of adventure, nonsense verse, and imaginative illustration.

Rather than reading just to learn proper behaviour and lessons, children got to find out what happened to Alice when she fell down the rabbit hole and follow the woodland adventures of “a silly old bear” and his friends. Reading for pleasure, curiosity, and wonder became a valued part of childhood in this golden age.

By looking at one popular style of book, the alphabet book, we can see echoes of trends found across children’s literature in the nineteenth century, laying the foundations of modern works. Didactic by nature, but with growing whimsy and creativity, these alphabet collections found in Gale’s Children’s Literature and Childhood archive (part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online) help us track the evolution of children’s literature.

Read more

Italian Futurism and Gale Primary Sources

by

│By Caley Collins, Gale Ambassador at University College London (UCL)│

Italian Futurism was an avant-garde movement founded in 1909 by F. T. Marinetti upon the publication of his tract The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism. The Futurists aimed to radically break from the past and create new types of literature, art, photography, and even music. They intended to glorify technology, aggression, and speed while destroying artistic and literary conventions.

The movement officially ended in 1944 with Marinetti’s death, however it is often considered to have had two phases. The first, more valiant phase is perceived as having ended in 1916 upon the deaths of several key members of the movement, including Umberto Boccioni, in WWI. In the subsequent years, Futurism moved in a different direction, allying itself with the Italian National Fascist Party and thus occasioning its own downfall. Using Gale Primary Sources, this post will explore the different facets of Futurism’s attempted creative emancipation from the past, alongside the movement’s legacy.

Read more

Femininity and Masculinity in Nineteenth-Century European Aesthetics

by

│By Sofía Sanabria de Felipe, Gale Ambassador at the University of Oxford│

In March 2022, an exhibition entitled Fashioning Masculinities opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Its manifesto was to show a ‘history of changing ideas of masculinity’. The exhibition greeted visitors with a gallery of plaster-casts of statues in a Greco-Roman idiom. Amongst them stood Pietro Francavilla’s statue of Apollo, a Renaissance sculpture depicting the apparent timelessness of the nude masculine ideal of Western classical epistemology.

Read more