The Might of Marketing – How Digital Marketing Engulfed Society in Three Decades

Mobile Phone with multicoloured dashes of light

│By Emily Priest, Digital Marketing MA student at the University of Portsmouth│

Today, digital marketing is unavoidable. Even if you don’t know what digital marketing is, you will almost certainly have experienced it at least once in the last twenty-four hours. Like digital technology, it is a part of almost every aspect of our lives. But this all-pervasive force wasn’t always in our workplace, screens, or pockets. Arguably, it is only thirty years ago that the term “digital marketing” was even coined and half that since it became mainstream.

Whilst digital marketing is the present and the future, let’s have a little look at its history.

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Birth Control: A History in Women’s Voices

Birth Control pills

│By Rebecca Bowden, Associate Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources

Earlier this year Gale launched Voice and Vision, the second part of Women’s Studies Archive. The first part, Issues and Identities, traced the social, political and professional achievements of women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; central to the archive are the issues that have affected women’s lives, and the campaigns and activism undertaken by women, from suffrage to pacifism. Voice and Vision builds on the many narratives and topics covered in Issues and Identities partly by placing greater emphasis on sharing women’s own voices – much of the material is written by women, for women. Voice and Vision also expands upon the scope of the first module, challenging researchers to grow their understanding of central issues and explore new avenues of investigation in relation to women’s stories. But what does this mean in practice? How do the materials in Voice and Vision work alongside those available in Issues and Identities? What new possibilities does it bring to the table? In this blog post we use birth control to explore these questions and understand the different viewpoints and opportunities provided by Voice and Vision.

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Ngiam Tong-Fatt’s Essays Provide Great Insight into Mid-Twentieth Century Southeast Asia

Map of the Malay Peninsula

│By Rebecca Chiew, Associate Editor with the Gale Asia Publishing Team

Ngiam Tong-fatt (嚴崇發 1917–?) was an overseas Chinese living in Singapore in the early and mid-twentieth century. He worked as a correspondent based in Singapore in the 1940s for The China Critic (中國評論週報, 1928–1946), a weekly periodical founded on May 31, 1928 by a group of Chinese intellectuals who had studied in the United States. Despite the editors’ avowed preference for “nonpolitical” discourse, The China Critic’s editorials and articles frequently discussed the presence of imperialism in Shanghai, debated the abolition of extraterritoriality, and advocated equal access to public facilities in the concessions. The editors also participated in wider-ranging discussions about urban affairs.

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History Lecturer uses Gale Primary Sources to Research Spanish National Pride

Lady with pig and joints of ham

│By Pauli Kettunen, Gale Ambassador at the University of Helsinki│

As I have previously emphasised here on The Gale Review, students have much to gain from using primary source archives. And not just for minor assignments – in this post Lily Deans from the University of Birmingham explained how she used Gale Primary Sources in her final-year dissertation. Developing on this, I now want to spotlight how Gale Primary Sources is extensively used by our lecturers as well – it really is bona fide research material! In this post, I interview Alejandro Gómez del Moral, Ph.D., a University Lecturer of Economic and Social History at the University of Helsinki.  He is using Gale Primary Sources in his current research project and was willing to share his thoughts with me. Due to the pandemic, we had our discussion on a video call, and Gómez del Moral was quick to mention how glad he was that these digital sources are still available for his research while many physical locations are closed.

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Decolonising the Curriculum with Archives Unbound

│By Megan Bowler, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool│

This post explores how Gale’s Archives Unbound series can be used to help with the urgent and vital task of decolonising the curriculum. Archives Unbound includes twenty-one unique collections focused on African American history, as well as numerous other collections which document the lives and experiences of other ethnic and social minorities around the world. (All Archives Unbound collections are available at the University of Liverpool, as we have access to Gale Reference Complete.) In light of the Black Lives Matter protests and growing discourses around ethnicity, colonialism and education, I was particularly drawn to exploring a collection focused on the federal surveillance of African Americans, including of Malcolm X and of the group he set up, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. This group argued that education was a vital element in the fight for civil rights.

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The Lesbian Avengers and the Importance of Intersectionality in LGBTQ+ Activism

Advert for the Lesbian Avengers

By Ellen Grace Lesser, Gale Ambassador at the University of Exeter

I was so excited to be given the opportunity to be one of the first people to undertake research in the latest module of Archives of Sexuality and Gender. The fourth module in the series, International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture focuses on the history of LGBTQ+ activism across the world. After exploring the archive, I want to share the story of the Lesbian Avengers and how their performative attempts at intersectionality ultimately led to their downfall.

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Somewhat Saving Summer 2020 – A Virtual Tour of Marseille

View of Marseille Old port

│by Meg Ison, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth│

After a busy exam season, students up and down the country look forward to long summer vacations, hopefully with a trip or two! Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, many of us don’t want to catch a flight this summer. But all is not lost! Gale Primary Sources, an online database of digitised primary sources, allows you to explore your cancelled holiday destination in a virtual way – from the safety of your own home!

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“Whoever Expected Prophets to Agree?” – Predicting the Future One Hundred Years Ago

: New aeroplane designs shown off at the 1920 International Aircraft Exhibition in Paris

│by Matthew Trenholm, Gale Ambassador at the University of Exeter│

In my last blog, I chose to focus on one Gale archive, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, but this time I wanted to demonstrate the full power of the Gale Primary Sources platform by looking at one topic across many archives simultaneously. The topic I have chosen is “the future” and what people a century ago believed it would look like. “The future” is an idea that is still endlessly debated, from dire warnings to wonderful promises; there is always something to discuss and the same was true a century ago. So, let’s jump into the archives and take a look at what the prophets of 1920 were saying!

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A Peep into Finnish War History with Gale Primary Sources

Montage of newspaper articles about Finland War History

│by Lotta Vuorio, Gale Ambassador at the University of Helsinki│

The current circumstances caused by the global pandemic have highlighted the importance of digital primary sources. In Helsinki, the university library has (in large part) physically shut its doors, but luckily there is a great deal of primary source material available in, for example, the digital collections of the National Library of Finland, and the Helsinki University Library also offers students and staff numerous digital collections which include several Gale Primary Sources archives. Gale Primary Sources is a treasure trove where one can find sources for various types of research.

One might initially think Gale Primary Sources is most suitable for research focusing on Great Britain or America, since the collections seem mostly focused on those areas. However, I wanted to find out if the platform could also be helpful when studying Finnish history! What I found, in short, was a highly interesting peephole into Finnish War History before the Second World War. I have not specialised in Finnish nor War History in my own research, but I was curious to examine coverage of Finland, and Helsinki especially. So, let’s see the results of my brief exploration!

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Liverpool’s Chinatown

Liverpool's Chinatown grand archway

by Constance Lam, Gale Ambassador at the University of Durham

Constructed in 2000, the Liverpool Chinese Arch remains an important landmark of Liverpool’s Chinatown. Standing at 13.5 metres high, this arch is the largest Chinese archway in Europe thus far, the impressive height reflecting the fact that Liverpool is home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe. On the twentieth year since the construction of the Chinese Arch, this blog post will look back on the rich history of Liverpool’s Chinatown.

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