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Case Studies posts

  • Dr. Catherine Oliver, recipient of the Wiley Digital Archives Research Fellowship, takes a closer look at the animals inside of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) archives

    May 20, 2022

    Dr. Catherine Oliver is a geographer based at the University of Cambridge. In 2020, Dr Catherine Oliver was awarded a Wiley Research Fellowship in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), which provided her with access to their digitized archives via the Wiley Digital Archive platform. Learn more about her experience using the WDA platform and the images she uncovered.

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  • PhD candidate Tommy Flynn connects the attitudes of the past with current racial disparities in healthcare

    July 28, 2021

    “Framing your perspective is a critical aspect of any research work,” says Tommy Flynn, a PhD candidate at Emory. “Publications and primary sources I found on Wiley Digital Archives talked about segregation, and the way people treated or perceived different social groups in the healthcare context, in ways that are discriminatory. I discovered hard evidence of attitudes and beliefs which helped explain today’s enormous disparities in treatment. Understanding the historical context has been vital for my research.”

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  • Lancaster PhD candidate Ann-Marie Richardson traces evidence of women’s participation in the RGS gatherings of the 19th century

    April 2, 2021

    Richardson, a PhD student at Lancaster University, looked at the Royal Geographical Society archive to explore the role of women in the 19th Century. “I wanted to find evidence of women in attendance at the RGS evening meetings during the 19th century, as well as the initial inclusion of women as fellows. I used the typeset transcripts feature, as some of the handwriting was difficult to read.”

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  • Loyola lecturer Dr. Catherine Nichols discusses the benefits of teaching with digital archives

    March 26, 2021

    Dr. Catherine Nichols, who holds a Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, is an Advanced Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology and Museum Studies within the Department of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago. She teaches on a wide range of subjects, including the process of researching museum collections, and has a particular interest in the digitalization of archives. For Dr. Nichols and her students, a key benefit of digital archives is its ease of access. Read the case to learn more.

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  • How Old Wives’ Tales Helped Cure Scurvy

    April 8, 2020

    Dr. Philippa Hellawell from King’s College London writes about her work researching the history of scurvy using primary sources from the archive of the Royal College of Physicians.

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  • A Look Back at the History of Family Planning from the Archives of the Royal College of Physicians

    December 27, 2019

    Dr. Laura Robson-Mainwaring, a Health Records Specialist at The National Archives, writes about looking at the Royal College of Physicians archive to explore original documents concerning the history of family planning.

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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

    Lecturer

    University of Glasgow

  • “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

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