Global Issues Library

The major challenges facing the world today—such as borders, climate change, gun control, mass incarceration, pandemics and financial crises, are often studied using newspaper articles, magazines, and bite-sized synopses. Global Issues Library  offers a multimedia approach to the study of global issues by providing access to deep primary sources, essays, books, case studies, and commentary, as well as documentaries and historical news footage.

Organized and indexed around key issues affecting humanity, the Global Issues Library also gives voice to personal experiences through video interviews, oral histories, letters, and diaries, helping students to empathize with people and populations affected. Government reports, books, and documentaries provides insights into the regional and global impact of events. Historical materials give context to topics and enable students to compare the issues of today with examples from the past.  

Thematic Coverage

The Global Issues Library will grow with new themed collections every year, covering events from the 1700s to the present which are critical to understanding the global affairs of today—including U.S./Mexico border issues, the Rwandan genocide, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Cuban Revolution, climate migration in the Pacific, international nuclear disarmament, and mass incarceration.

Curated by cross-disciplinary advisory boards of scholars from around the world, the current Library  includes:

• Over 600,000 pages, including rare, previously unpublished archival material, government documents, oral histories, and personal narratives;

• 900 hours of streaming documentaries, media footage, and other types of video;

• 300 case studies for the classroom;

• 3,000 photographs.

Issues and events are presented from multiple perspectives—personal, governmental, institutional, legal, contemporaneous, and retrospective— permitting the comparison of issues in a variety of contexts and in an interdisciplinary manner. Students and scholars can consider:

• How atrocities and war occur and their aftermath across borders;

• How climate change and security issues affect displacement;

• The global history of disaster planning and emergency management;

• The triggers of revolutions and what follows after regime changes.

• The global trends in mass incarceration and the prison infrastructure of specific countries.

Teaching Power

Opportunities for comparative study: Content is organized around thematic units, such as the Cambodian genocide, the Burma-Myanmar conflict, the Iranian Revolution of 1953, and the European Union and its borders. This structure allows students to compare issues geographically, historically, or from other viewpoints.

Interdisciplinary: Aligning with curricula, the Global Issues Library combines historical, political, sociological, artistic, and human rights perspectives. It supports research and teaching in international studies, global affairs, history, political science, economic history, sociology, security studies, peace studies, law, public policy, environmental studies, and anthropology.