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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An American Missionary with Two Motherlands: Joseph Beech and West China Union University

│By Liping Yang, Publishing Manager, Digital Archive and eReference, Gale Asia│

Reverend Dr Joseph Beech played an instrumental role in founding and running West China Union University, first as its founding president and later its chancellor, due to his vision, foresight, and resourcefulness. Today, March 11, 2020, marks the 110th anniversary of the founding of the university, one of the thirteen Christian universities established in China before 1949. Based on a perusal and research of articles published in English periodicals such as West China Missionary News, The Chinese Recorder and Educational Review, all available in Gale’s China and the Modern World archive, as well as his correspondence with the American Methodist Episcopal Church, available in Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West, this essay attempts to reconstruct the story of this great missionary-educator who dedicated forty years of his life to the advancement of education in China, especially West China.

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Exploring the Potential of Video Games as Learning Tools Using Gale Primary Sources

Image from article: Frean, Alexandra. "Well-behaved pupils given video games and executive perks." Times, 15 Dec. 2007, p. 13. The Times Digital Archive

│By Evelyn Moran, Gale Ambassador at the National University of Ireland Galway│

Video games are a popular mode of entertainment in many households. From mobile apps to big blockbuster computer games, to smaller games made with shoestring budgets, the choices are varied and exhaustive. That said, video games in general have a somewhat negative reputation. As a student, I was curious to discover if my favourite games could have a positive effect on my education. I decided to turn to Gale Primary Sources to investigate. Using Gale’s “Advanced search” tool, I was able to search their database for both “video games” and “education”. Here is what I found.

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Sports Day: A Day for Everyone

By Matt Chivers, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool

I attended Dover Grammar School for Boys, and although not every student enjoyed PE, Sports Day was always a day that everyone seemed to enjoy. There were no lessons, or deadlines; everyone was buzzing, standing around the playing fields, participating or watching the various track and field events. Delving into Gale’s primary source archives, I found not only the photograph above, showing my predecessors in the now-vintage sports gear of the 1930s, but a results sheet from the Dover Grammar School Sports Day of 1948. It is interesting that back then the four houses of the school were named Maxton, Buckland, Country and Town after four different areas of Dover. The current school houses also use this theme, and are named Channel, Castle, Port and Priory.

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The History of International Women’s Day and the Origins of Women’s History Month

By Rachel Holt, Acquisitions Editor for Gale International

Happy International Women’s Day (#BalanceforBetter) and may your Women’s History Month 2019 be an enlightening one!

Every year March marks the month where several countries around the world celebrate female contributions to society by recognising their achievements throughout history. However, the origins of how both these events came into being are themselves fascinating episodes in feminist history. If “history is written by the victors” then who decides which people and events from the past deserves our attention?[1]

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