Collection Spotlight: Full-Page Scans of National Geographic Magazine
by Winn W. Wasson, Social Science Librarian
Stunning photographs. Detailed thematic maps and infographics. Insightful articles about the physical and human Earth. These are some of the qualities that have made National Geographic magazine, with its iconic, yellow-bordered covers, beloved by readers for over 137 years. Published by the Washington, D.C.-based National Geographic Society, National Geographic is a popular-press magazine that explores Earth’s wildlife, landscapes, cultures, social and environmental issues, and human conflicts.
Syracuse University Libraries has online access to full-page image archives of National Geographic magazine from 1888-2020 through the National Geographic Magazine Archive database. Through this 132-year arc, users of the database can learn about our planet’s people and places and how they have changed, as well as how the way journalists and scholars study and talk about those peoples and places has evolved over time. The database provides a rich archive for those studying not just geography and geology, but for students and scholars in any of the social sciences; visual and performing arts; architecture; area studies; and biology, environmental science, and other STEM fields. There is also the occasional article related to astronomy.
The magazine will also be of interest to students and scholars of advertising and public relations. In issues from recent decades, as you browse through the online scanned pages of the magazine, before you get to the table of contents, there are advertisements geared towards an educated, globally savvy audience, whether the ad is promoting a Dow Chemical recycling initiative in Brazil, noting Rolex’s partnership with the National Geographic Society, or showcasing Canon cameras through the company’s featured wildlife photograph of the month. The advertisements in National Geographic show that the magazine’s visual power does not just lie in its maps, infographics and photojournalism.
Search the text of all articles from 1888-2020 through optical character recognition technology. However, National Geographic do not discount the value and joy of browsing through the monthly issues. By browsing the online issues, you can go along on the discovery process with the magazine’s contributors and come across images whose subjects can range from birds to mountains to vendors in a bazaar; pore over infographics on subjects such as water scarcity, endangered species, or smart buildings; and examine the detailed maps that could explore the terrain of a conflict zone, the layout of culturally significant sites in a city today or hundreds of years ago, or the sites visited by spacecraft on Mars.
With 132 years of archives for a magazine that has been monthly since 1896, there is bound to be something in the unbound pages of National Geographic that will be of interest to anyone. Feel free to visit the National Geographic Magazine Archive database if you have a specific search or, especially, if you would just like to browse cover-to-cover.
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