• British Association for the Advancement of Science—Collections on the History of Science (1830s-1970s)

    A new archive covering 150 years of scientific discovery. Developed in partnership with Jisc, the not-for-profit organization providing digital services and solutions for UK education and research.

    Learn More

  • Technology to Explore History

    Our platform is designed to power research and foster learning. Intuitive and user-friendly, it makes discovery and teaching with primary source content into a seamless experience.

    Watch

  • Royal Geographical Society Research Fellowships 2020-21 Awarded

    The Royal Geographical Society has awarded eleven researchers with access to Wiley Digital Archives to advance their work on a wide range of subjects, from space flight to the early uses of isobaths and contour lines on maps.

    Learn More

  • History’s Ears Are Ringing: Examining Archival Evidence of Past Pandemics

    A webcast with Dr. Jacob Steere-Williams, Associate Professor at the College of Charleston, about parallels between past pandemics and the current outbreak.

    Watch

What We Do
Bridging the Past to the Future

Wiley Digital Archives restores, digitizes and catalogs the archives of some of the world’s most influential academic and scientific societies and universities, connecting the brilliant minds of the past with the researchers shaping the future.

We bring centuries-old, unique primary source content in an advanced platform, making it accessible anywhere in the world.

Our content includes the archives of the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal Anthropological Institute, the New York Academy of Sciences, the Royal Geographical Society, and the just-launched British Association for the Advancement of Science, still on demo mode.

We’ve given these rare source materials a new digital life, delivering them through a proprietary platform that makes searching, sorting and sharing content easy.

Minutes of the ninth meeting of the Vaccination Committee. Proceedings Of The Royal College Of Physicians Of London, January 29, 1807. Source: The Royal College of Physicians.

Why We Do It
Preserve. Restore. Respect.

Each archive tells a story of discovery and innovation in the history of Sciences—but, in the past, only those with the means to travel to the archive site benefited from this content. We make it accessible to scholars worldwide, while preserving the originals for future generations.

The process starts with conservation. It’s not unusual for our team of accredited conservators to spend as much as 750 hours repairing, restoring and cataloging archive materials prior to digitization, always leaving the materials in better shape than when we began.

Using state-of-the-art scanning technology, archival content is then transformed into clear, crisp, searchable documents and made accessible on our platform where researchers can find, group, translate, download, manipulate and share historical materials with ease.

Austin, Coe Finch, 1878-1965. C. F. Austin, Goe J. Austin, Prof. Edward Juekesmaw, Nathaniel Lord Britton Records, Box 1, 1878-1965. Source: The New York Academy of Sciences

Support Teaching
Foster Learning

Wiley Digital Archives makes teaching with primary source content into an engaging experience for educators and students.

Our program facilitates the development of syllabi, coursework, individual and group assignments and collaborations in which students learn not only a subject, but the value of working with primary sources.

Intuitive and user-friendly, our platform fosters learning in a digital environment that supports education, powers the virtual classroom, and enhances distant teaching.

 

School; a reading lesson under an Anglo-Chinese teacher. H. Kirkhope, RGS Images Online, 1/1/1907. Source: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

Wiley Digital Archives combines unique primary source content with advanced platform technology

Exclusive content

Wiley Digital Archives - content

Over 90% of our content is not available in a digital format anywhere else.

Focus on STEM history

Wiley Digital Archives - STEM

This is the only archival program focused on History of Science, History of Technology and  Natural History.

Built for research

Wiley Digital Archives - built for research

Our technologically advanced platform embedded with leading digital humanities tools is designed for research efficiency.

Powers teaching

Our program powers the virtual classroom and makes teaching with primary sources into a seamless experience.

What People Are Saying

  • “I used the typeset transcripts feature, as some of the handwriting was difficult to read. Thanks to the on-screen citations tab, I could keep an ongoing bibliography for my notes.”

    Ann-Marie Richardson

    PhD Candidate AHRC North West Consortium Funded Researcher with The Royal Society

    Lancaster University

  • "The Wiley Digital Archives interface is seamless and has a crisp, clean look. Clutter is a distracting feature of many databases, so it was enjoyable to smoothly browse these archives without running into interruptions, rather focusing on the substance. The content is incredible and can add enormous value to my research work in the history and evolution of healthcare."

    Tommy Flynn

    RN, CPNP-AC | Ph.D. Candidate, Nursing

    Emory University

  • “With the search terms I use, the collocations tool gives me a better sense of what is available in the archives. I’m able to click on a word and quickly be led to other information, to access a larger, macro view, and there can be real value in that.”

    Dr. Catherine Nichols

    Department of Anthropology and Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities

    Loyola University Chicago

  • “The WDA platform is a wonderful resource, bringing together numerous collections and enabling cross-referencing across multiple archives.”

    Mobeen Hussain

    co-Editor in Chief--Doing History in Public

    PhD Candidate, World History--University of Cambridge

  • “The search functions in Wiley Digital Archives are particularly good for the type of research I do. I can cross-reference my current inventories of Livingstone’s mentions of the word “women” very quickly, and the horizontality of the search process enables me to happen upon other works of interest that I might not have found otherwise. The malleability of this search function, in combination with the quality of the Wiley’s OCR, has facilitated fast, comprehensive data access—and underscores the value that these records can bring to the understanding of the socio-cultural makeup of exploration.“

    Dr. Kathryn Simpson

    Researcher, Edinburgh Napier University

    Associate Project Scholar and UK Outreach Coordinator at Livingstone Online

  • “Wiley Digital Archives are always available, so there are no time limitations. Just as important, it opens the access to Society Archives to independent scholars or researchers at schools that don’t have the funding for extensive travel.”

    Sarah M. Pickman

    Ph.D. Candidate—History of Science and Medicine Program

    Yale University

  • “The RAI’s archive is the unique repository of Arthur Bernard Deacon’s original reproductions, which have been included by UNESCO in the Memory of the World Register in 2013.”

    Jacopo Baron

    PhD Candidate Doctoral School of Social Anthropology and Ethnology

    EHESS of Paris

  • “Wiley Digital Archives presents extremely robust features and tools for users. The dense archival collections are highly navigable with rich metadata and advanced filtering functionality. The range of exploration and analysis tools present users with innovative ways to explore within—and across—archives and collections.”

    Maria Smith

    Center for Research Libraries

Request a Free Trial

Schedule a demo with our team and receive a FREE 30-Day trial of our proprietary platform that breaks the traditional paradigms of “search, browse and retrieve.”

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