(25 October 2017, Hoboken, NJ) John Wiley and Sons Inc., has announced a new program of digital primary sources providing unprecedented access to historical records across the sciences and medicine.
Launching in 2018, Wiley Digital Archives will enable institutional customers to purchase digital access to unique or rare historical primary sources, digitized from leading societies such as the New York Academy of Sciences and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Additional partner societies, libraries, and archives around the world will be added, continually expanding the availability of rare documents and information to improve research outcomes and further educational goals.
From one of our inaugural partners, The New York Academy of Sciences, Douglas Braaten, Chief Science Officer, says, “The Academy’s history captures not only the history of our society but of New York City and beyond. Digitizing our archives brings to light 200 years of scientific progress through the extraordinary efforts of individuals and institutions.”
The program will tell the stories behind the journals and society content Wiley publishes and will include: maps, manuscripts, periodicals, administrative papers, data, fieldwork, correspondence, books, photographs, illustrations, proceedings, meeting minute books, conference papers, pamphlets, reports, grey literature, and ephemera. This program will have a broad, multidisciplinary appeal, and run along the historical continuum from the origins of societies and subject disciplines to specific areas of more modern research.
Dr. David Shankland, Director, Royal Anthropological Institute, adds, “The RAI more than any other institution provided the capacity for the creation of modern anthropology. Here, through its unique archive of manuscripts, photos, and archives we can see how step by step this was done. By making this wonderful resource available digitally, these outstanding and often untapped primary sources for any researcher in the history of anthropology will be available to a desktop, wherever it may be.”
A society’s archives reflect the input, output, dialogue, and the working research resource of a society. The archives reflect not just a society’s history but their values, ideas, disagreements, breakthroughs, and aspirations. The Wiley Digital Archives program provides access to the interconnected histories of the sciences, medicine, and other disciplines, along with tools for data analysis and visualization, and will benefit researchers and students across a range of disciplines.
“The Wiley Digital Archives program will bring millions of pages of archival content– centuries of primary sources — back to life. We are excited to partner with the New York Academy of Sciences in their bicentennial year to help preserve and disseminate their historic content to the global research community,” adds Jay Flynn, Wiley’s Senior VP & Managing Director for Research Publishing.
The announcement is here.
