New Wiley Digital Archives Collection
The Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) was founded in 1830. The learned Society promotes the advancement of geographical science in all its aspects. The Society’s archive contains vast collections, spanning 500 years of geography, travel and exploration. The RGS holds one of the largest private map collections in the world. It includes one million sheets of maps and charts, 3000 atlases, 40 globes, and 1000 gazetteers. The earliest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485.
The collection also includes: Expedition Reports; Fieldnotes, Correspondence and Diaries; Grey Literature; Photographs, Artwork and Illustrations; Journal Manuscripts; Photographs; Proceedings, Lectures, and Ephemera. The collection spans a wide variety of interdisciplinary research areas, and supports educational needs in Anthropology, Area Studies; Cartography and Visualizations, Colonial, Post-Colonial & Decolonisation Studies; Development Studies; Environmental Degradation; Historical & Cultural Geography; Historical Sociology; Human Geography; Identity, Gender & Ethnic Studies; Geology; International Relations; Trade and Commerce, and Law and Policy relating to Colonization.
The RGS collection also boasts over one hundred unique special collections. These include the Everest Collection; the David Livingstone Collection; the Sir Ernest Shackleton Collection; the Stanley Collection; the Younghusband Collection; the Speke Collection; and the Gertrude Bell Collection.