Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the long nineteenth century.
The nineteenth century was the first great age of industrialization and technological innovation. It was an age of political revolution and reform, nationalism and nation building, the expansion of empire and colonialism, growing literacy and education, and the flowering of culture—both popular and high. It was an age that witnessed the development of the power-driven printing press and a massive explosion of written material that dwarfed the output of the centuries that preceded it. Any undertaking that attempts to synthesize the vast array of nineteenth-century content may be at best only provisionally comprehensive. Nevertheless, bringing a coherent, interdisciplinary, and global vision to the project is an important challenge. Gale Digital Collection's international board of scholars, working in tandem with advisors for each of the program's archives, have steered the program's direction and helped identify the collections that most enhance it—for scholars and students alike.