Gale Celebrates Women's History Month with Release of New Women's Studies Archive

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., March 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- As we celebrate Women's History Month, Gale, a Cengage company, has launched a new archive on women's studies that explores the many contributions of women throughout history.  Part of the growing Gale Primary Sources program, the Women's Studies Archive represents Gale's focus on publishing material that supports diversity studies and provides historical context around current topics.

"We're witnessing a tremendous amount of activity and interest in support of women's rights," said Phil Faust, vice president of academic product at Gale. "To understand the issues being discussed today in the media and in classrooms across the country, it's imperative to have resources that can help us understand our past. It's exciting to bring our customers such an important archive on women's history at this pivotal time."

The first collection within the Women's Studies Archive, titled Women's Issues and Identities, traces the path of women's issues from past to present—pulling primary sources from manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, and more. It captures the foundation of women's movements, struggles and triumphs, and provides researchers with valuable insights.

Molly Murphy MacGregor, founder of the National Women's History Project – and a leader in establishing March as Women's History Month, notes the importance of primary sources in particular when it comes to understanding and studying women's history. "When I first began my research in women's studies I was shocked at how few resources existed when it came to primary sources and women's history," said Murphy MacGregor. "It can be hard to trust material of the past as well as material today, but primary sources offer a more accurate account of important women's issues," she continued. "Gale's Women's Studies Archive is an important contribution to our field at the right time."

Covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Women's Issues and Identities collection includes one million never-before-digitized pages of primary source material, all aligned with the issues that have affected women and the many contributions they have made to society.

Some of the key events and issues covered include the birth control movement and the efforts during the 1950's, 60's, and 70's that ultimately propelled women to high profile government positions. The archive also brings together some of the most important political, professional and popular periodicals written by and for women across Europe during the critical period of the women's movement (1840-1940). It will support study across disciplines such as gender and women's studies, history, anthropology, interdisciplinary studies, sociology and more.

Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issues and Identities is available on the Gale Primary Sources platform, meaning it is cross-searchable with other Gale Primary Sources collections, like the Archives of Sexuality & Gender and American Civil Liberties Union Papers, 1912-1990. Students, faculty and researchers can integrate content from complementary primary source products in one intuitive environment to make never-before-possible research connections. Users can also benefit from the platform's downloadable Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature which enables monographs, newspapers, and ephemera to be keyword and full-text searchable. In addition, content from within the archive can be purchased in multiple formats to aid customers in their own text and data mining and projects.

For more information on Gale's Women's Studies Archive, please visit www.gale.com/WomensStudies or stop by the Gale booth (#341) at the Association of College Research Libraries (ACRL) conference in Baltimore, March 22-24. On Thursday, March 23, Gale will also host a session at ACRL "Exploring Diversity Through The Lens Of History" which will focus on the use of primary sources for study in  subjects such as civil liberties, LGBTQ issues, and women's rights.

To access a recorded webinar for an overview of Women's Studies Archive: Women's Issues and Identities, please visit http://www.choice360.org/librarianship/webinars/celebrating-women-s-history-with-library-resources.

About Cengage and Gale
Cengage is the education and technology company built for learners. The company serves the higher education, K-12, professional, library and workforce training markets worldwide. Gale, a Cengage company, 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 60 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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Kristina Massari                                                   
Cengage                                                                                                               
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