Gale Publishers

Ways To Improve Discoverability at Your Library

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| Magaly Taylor, Usage and Discovery Product Manager |

Discovery is a crucial aspect of working with eResources for content providers and libraries. It encompasses actions related to searching, retrieving, and accessing relevant content that end users may not be aware of. The term ‘Discoverability’ is key here. It refers to the extent to which eResources are searchable in a discovery system, and it directly influences the ease with which users can find the information they need, thereby enhancing their overall experience. In this post I will explore the complexities of discovery and how to enhance discoverability in libraries.

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A Century of Change: How Soviet Union Policies Reshaped Kazakhstan’s Demographics

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|By Alisher Romankul, Year 11 Student at NIS of Kyzylorda, Kazakhstan|

It is believed that the Kazakhs, who lived a nomadic culture for hundreds of years, faced a number of demographic crises in the twentieth century under the rule of the USSR. Since the beginning of industrialisation in the Soviet Union and before the collapse of the USSR, the ethnic and demographic situation in the country has changed dramatically.

This blog post will explore industrialisation, the famine of 1931-1933, deportation in the Kazakh SSR, World War II, and the development of virgin lands and discuss how the collapse of the USSR affected the population in the country.

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The History of West Malaysia and Singapore as Refracted Through British Colonial Office Files

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|By Liping Yang, Senior Manager, Academic Publishing, and Emma Harris, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources|

Please be aware that this blog posts includes primary sources which describe extensive violence and oppression; the decision to read the post is at your own discretion.

Gale Primary Sources’ State Papers Online Colonial: Asia digital archive welcomed its third instalment in September 2024 – State Papers Online Colonial: Asia, Part III: Malay States, Malaya, and Straits Settlements – providing a continuation of and perfect complement to Part II through a thematic collection on the history of West Malaysia and the earlier history of Singapore.

Made up of mostly original correspondence, as well as two series of maps and plans, and a series of historical photographs, Part III contains over 625,000 newly scanned pages from twelve Colonial Office series sourced from The National Archives, UK.

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Sacred Returns: The American Bison, Prophecy and History  

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│By Lindsay Whitaker-Guest, Associate Editor│

In June 2024, an extremely rare white bison (buffalo) calf was sighted in Yellowstone National Park causing great excitement amongst visitors, wildlife researchers, and most significantly local Native American people.

The birth is ecologically and culturally important, but above all symbolises the momentous recovery of the American bison, which according to Native American traditions is an indication of a brighter future. But why has the birth of this adorable creature been so celebrated? And what might this mean for the future of the American bison?   

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Courting Primary Sources: Historical Opportunities from Briefs filed with the U.S. Courts of Appeals

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│By Bennett Graff, Manager, Acquisitions, Gale Primary Sources│

The family of titles that comprise The Making of Modern Law series is a critical part of the Gale Primary Sources portfolio.  Titles in the series reveal aspects of our social, economic, religious, and political history through documentation that come from a universe of data that is both part of and yet, in notable ways, distinct from the kinds of materials one might regard as “typical” of archival collections. Aside from their obvious worth to legal scholars, how can these materials be of value to researchers from other disciplines?

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Lost (and Found) in Translation: Language in Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History

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│By Leila Marhamati, Associate Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

Post-colonialist thinker Frantz Fanon declared the importance of language in a world globalised through empire and colonisation: “To speak… means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization”. It is ironic to cite this quotation in translation from the original French, as Fanon’s point is that the language we speak is both a product of and perpetuates the culture we live in. As an English speaker, what do I know about his thinking? His worldview?

For societies and nations founded through colonialism, language is crucial. The language of the coloniser is often forced upon the colonised. Holding onto a language despite imperialist pressures then becomes a form of resistance and a declaration of selfhood. All of these implications of language can be explored in Gale Primary Sources’ Archives of Latin American and Caribbean History, Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries.

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A Classroom Compendium: Digital Humanities Resources for a New School Year

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│By Sarah L. Ketchley, Sr. Digital Humanities Specialist│

For the start of a new academic year, this month’s Notes from our DH Correspondent blog post is a useful resource indexing all the Notes posts to date. They are categorised below to support instructors to plan, build and deliver classroom DH curricula.  This is a great page to bookmark!

Each resource can be supplemented with detailed material in the Learning Center in Gale Digital Scholar Lab which provides step-by-step instructions in written and video formats, covering every aspect of working in the platform. 

Need additional support? Our DH team will be happy to answer your questions! Just email us at [email protected]

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Archives Unbound: Preserving Cultural Heritage That Might Otherwise Be Lost in War

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│By Philip Virta, Senior Acquisitions Editor│

The Archives Unbound program provides multiple perspectives on global history. Through our institutional partners and archival collections, we preserve, protect, and provide access to government documents, personal papers, organisational records, and heritage collections. In a historic period that has seen conflicts threatening lives, freedom, and cultural heritage, Gale Primary Sources is proud to do its own small part in preserving the past for the benefit of future generations.

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Bridging the Gap: Gale Primary Sources and Gale Digital Scholar Lab

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│By Sarah L. Ketchley, Senior Digital Humanities Specialist│

This month’s blog post will discuss how to start the work of sourcing research documents in Gale Primary Sources (GPS) archives, before transitioning seamlessly to Gale Digital Scholar Lab to create content sets, clean OCR text data, and conduct analyses of this material to answer research questions. With this methodology, researchers are able to use the rich contextual detail and varied navigation options to begin compiling their corpus of text data outside of the Lab, which can be an attractive option if the user has an existing working knowledge of specific GPS archives, such as The Times Digital Archive, Women’s Studies Archive, or Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

There is a standardised user experience across GPS and the Lab, making the transition from one to the other familiar and streamlined. However, there are options to view documents in GPS that aren’t yet available in the Lab, which may make combining both access points useful so that no document slips through the cracks!

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Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers: A Retrospective

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│By Megan Sullivan, Senior Product Manager, Gale Primary Sources│

The COVID-19 pandemic and pivot to remote instruction shed light on a longstanding challenge in the humanities and related disciplines – how can instructors effectively incorporate digital primary sources into their pedagogy?

According to a 2021 study by ITHAKA S&R, two of the key obstacles to teaching with primary sources are: (1) discovery tools are not optimised to help instructors locate resources for classroom use and (2) students do not always have the required skills to find and evaluate relevant primary sources. These two problems were top of mind when designing the Gale Primary Sources Learning Centers which are now approaching the three-year anniversary of their initial release.

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