Global Setting: The collection span’s multiple locations worldwide, including Scotland, England, America, New Zealand and Australia. These diverse settings, combined with global maritime crossings, offer unique international perspectives and shed light on how continents were interconnected during this period.
 

Social History: The archive interlaces accounts of daily living with notable historical events. Eyewitness accounts of events such as the Suffrage Movement, Prohibition, and the Spanish Flu Epidemic are interwoven with detailed descriptions of everyday life. This offers unparalleled insights into how broader historical events impacted ordinary people and their communities.
 

Breadth of Topics: The collection contains a range of rich and diverse content. This broad scope contrasts with collections focused more narrowly on specific subjects such as American Independence, slavery or The Civil War. The breadth of content offers a resource for both multi-discipline and inter-discipline fields of study enabling scholars to go deeper in one discipline or across disciplines by analyzing how they intersect with each other.
 

Unique Content: The collection offers eyewitness accounts of weighty and provocative themes rarely divulged from this era including mental illness, promiscuity and marital dysfunction.
 

Life Course Record: Spanning 49 years, the archive captures the arc of an entire adult life, from youth to old age, and everything in between. This long-term perspective offers insights into life patterns and personal development over time, contrasting with shorter records limited to presenting small snapshots of life.
 

Middle Class Perspective: McCallum’s raw and gritty accounts provide insight into the perspective of the middle and working class of the period. This perspective offers a counterbalance to records from more privileged classes and the often-glitzy upper-class film and television portrayals of the late Victorian/Edwardian era.
 

Flawed Author: Robert McCallum happened to be a flawed character, a complex, hot-tempered anti-hero who frequently portrayed himself in a less than favorable light. Personal accounts of moral failings and deviant behavior including portrayals of a frequent brothel visitor, a short-fused landlord, a ruthless businessman, and a vindictive husband. This offers a stark contrast to many collections whose authors tend to be noble, virtuous, pleasant historical figures.
 

Not Intended for Publication: McCallum wrote journal entries for his own personal use, not with eventual publication in mind. He was neither a writer nor a public figure who typically write with the intent of being read by others. The act of writing for an audience, whether conscious or subconscious, significantly affects the authenticity of what is recorded—and what is omitted. As a result, the McCallum Archive consists of raw, often ineloquent, and brutally honest accounts, free from calculation or retrospection. It offers a contrast to more deliberate historical records and serves as a valuable primary source of authentic social history.