Through the Libraries, you now have access to 135 years of the National Geographic Magazine, a digital archive that documents the planet and its peoples, flora and fauna through breathtaking photography, path-breaking cartography, and painstaking research. Offering fully-searchable article text, page images, and maps, this online archive presents a trove of research opportunities, from exploration of the earth, oceans, and space to the exploration of cultures, species, and environment. Some of the important stories you will find in the archive include:
- 1909: Robert Peary’s expedition to the North Pole
- 1911: Hiram Bingham writes of his excavation of Machu Picchu
- 1929: Richard Byrd’s flight to the South Pole
- 1952: Jacques Cousteau’s first of many articles on undersea life
- 1961: Jane Goodall’s research on the chimpanzees of Gombe
- 1969: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins described their Apollo 11 mission
- 1985: Robert Ballard’s exploration of the wreck of the Titanic
Fold-out wall maps are also included in the archive: use the Advanced Search and limit your keywords to content type “Map Supplements” to find them. Note that you may also limit to covers, feature articles, or try advertisements to view more than a century of popular culture reflected in ads for camera and camping equipment, cigarettes and insurance.
Accessibility
Because of the extent of photographic and cartographic content, pages in the National Geographic Magazine Archive are presented by default as images which can be magnified or minimized. To view the text of an article in a format suitable for screen readers or copy and paste, use the Explore menu on the left to turn on the plain text (OCR) view.
Acknowledging Flaws
Despite its stated commitment to unbiased and balanced coverage of the globe, it is impossible to ignore the past editorial stance of the magazine, which treated African, Asian, and Indigenous cultures as exotic and primitive. While exposing readers to new ideas and cultures, the magazine at the same time reinforced harmful stereotypes. In 2018, the National Geographic Society acknowledged the cultural bias and racism in its archives in a special issue devoted to race. As historian John Edwin Mason wrote in the introduction to the issue, “It’s possible to say that a magazine can open people’s eyes at the same time that it closes them.”1 The National Geographic Magazine Archive functions as much as an artifact of past attitudes and assumptions as a record of scientific achievement and understanding.
Sources for this post
1. Mason, John Edwin quoted in Goldberg, Susan, “From the Editor: To Rise Above the Racism of the Past, We Must Acknowledge it,” National Geographic, vol. 233, no. 4, Apr. 2018. link.gale.com/apps/doc/LSKEID156095571/NGMA?u=faye28748&sid=bookmark-NGMA&xid=61c53ded.
See also
Daniel, Victor. “National Geographic Acknowledges Its Racist Past Coverage.” The New York Times. 2018. https://onesearch.uark.edu/permalink/01UARK_INST/573n21/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2013404795.
Hawkins, Stephanie L. American Iconographic: National Geographic, Global Culture, and the Visual Imagination. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010. https://onesearch.uark.edu/permalink/01UARK_INST/573n21/cdi_proquest_miscellaneous_2131912781.
List of National Geographic Cover Stories. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Geographic_cover_stories.
Lutz, Catherine., and Jane Lou Collins. Reading National Geographic. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. https://onesearch.uark.edu/permalink/01UARK_INST/1es9vl6/alma991023123679707336.
Poole, Robert M. Explorers House : National Geographic and the World It Made. New York: Penguin Press, 2004. https://onesearch.uark.edu/permalink/01UARK_INST/1es9vl6/alma991014788149707336.
Steet, Linda. Veils and Daggers : a Century of National Geographic’s Representation of the Arab World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. https://onesearch.uark.edu/permalink/01UARK_INST/1es9vl6/alma991006375479707336.