Genealogy: Home

'Who's Who' contains autobiographical listings for over 35,000 people from around the globe who have an impact on British life, including senior politicians, judges, civil servants, and notable figures from the arts, academia, and other areas. Each biographee provides the details for their entry, and many include contact details. 'Who Was Who' goes back to 1897 and includes the entries of over 94,000 people, now deceased, who were included in previous editions of Who's Who.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the national record of men and women who have shaped British history and culture from Roman times to the twenty-first century. Entries are for those who died in or before the year 2012. It contains over 60,300 biographies and over 11,400 portraits.

A collaborative project between Cambridge University Press and the Royal Irish Academy, this resource contains over 9000 biographical articles which describe and assess the careers of Irish subjects in a variety of fields, including politics, law, religion, literature, journalism, architecture, painting, music, the stage, science, medicine, engineering, entertainment and sport. It is updated twice a year.

American National Biography Online contains biographies of more than 19,000 men and women - from all eras and walks of life - whose lives have shaped American history and culture.

The Bibliography of British and Irish History searches academic resources (book, book chapters and journal articles) relating to the history of the British Isles and the British Empire and Commonwealth. It covers all periods for which written documentation is available - from 55BC to the present. It contains almost 590,000 records.

Web of Science is a useful tool for finding journal articles about North American history.

Content in JSTOR spans many disciplines, primarily in the humanities and social sciences. The Library subscribes to the following JSTOR journal collections: Arts & Sciences I,II,III,IV & VII, and Business II. JSTOR archives contains the full-text of non-current issues of journals digitised back to the first issue published to a date generally 3 to 5 years from the most current published issue. We also have access to current content for a few publications on the JSTOR platform. The Library also has access to the JSTOR digitised collection of 19th Century British Pamphlets.

Humanities Source is a useful resource for anyone studying or researching the humanities. It provides full text access to over 1400 journals and citations to over 3.5 million articles including book reviews.

An international abstracting and indexing tool for research in the humanities, Humanities Index indexes over 400 internationally respected humanities journals and weekly magazines published in the UK and other English speaking countries, as well as quality newspapers published in the UK. There are regular monthly updates.

SAGE Research Methods contains more than 1000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world-leading academics from across the social sciences. It supports research at all levels and across all subjects by providing material to guide users through every step of the research process. Also includes cases, datasets, data analysis and materials on data visualization, qualitative and quantitative research methods, statistical methods and statistical packages such as Python, R and SPSS among others.

AM Research Skills is an electronic resource which helps researchers to gain skills in approaching primary sources such as newspapers, photographs, letters, objects, films and more. It contains almost 200 essays, videos, guides and case studies which describe how primary sources can be interrogated and used in academic research. This resource will be of interest to anyone who wishes to use primary sources in their research, assignments or essays.

The Red Book of Scotland is an important resource for Scottish historical and genealogical research. It provides information on the genealogy of Scottish families.

This database provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.

Colonial State Papers provides access to over 7000 hand-written documents and 40,000 bibliographic records about colonial history. It covers Britain's colonial relations with the Americas and other European rivals for power and also covers the Caribbean and Atlantic world. Covers the period 1574-1757.

Documents on British Policy Overseas is a collection of 20th century primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is based on three print series covering peacetime diplomacy: British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1918-1939 and Documents on British Overseas Policy.

Gale Primary Sources allows users to search across various primary source archive collections from the provider Gale. The archives are:

17th and 18th Century Burney Collection,
British Library Newspapers - parts 1 and 2 (19th century),
19th Century UK Periodicals,
The Economist Historical Archive,
The Financial Times Historical Archive,
The Times Digital Archive, and
Archives Unbound.

Full text or page images of over 400,000 books published in England from 1475 to 1900. The service includes EEBO (Early English Books Online), ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online), Nineteenth Century Books from the British Library Collection, and also the UK Medical Heritage Library.

Mass Observation Online provides access to digitised versions of manuscripts and papers collected by the Mass Observation organisation in Britain during the period 1937 to the mid 1950s. It provides insights into daily lives and routines and provides access to primary sources of interest to those researching or studying historical, sociological or anthropological subjects.

See also Mass Observation Project.

Full text of Medieval and Early Modern books. Searches digitised versions of documents relating to Colonial, English, Irish and Scottish history. Covers the period 1100 - 1800.

Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Part One) covers the advent of commercial lifestyle publishing in Britain. Content is drawn from the collections of the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Australia, and National Library of South Africa. Topics covered include the rarely documented aspects of women, children, humour, and leisure activity in the Victorian age. The rise of magazine publishing is reflected in the selection of publications, which spans publications aimed at and tailored to various audiences, including women and children.

You can either search Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals on its own here, or with other primary sources using Gale Primary Sources.

Queen Victoria's Journals are a key primary source for scholars of 19th Century British political and social history, and for those working on gender and autobiographical writing. The website provides access to the entire sequence of Queen Victoria's diaries.

Part I: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Domestic. Part II: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Foreign.

State Papers Online provides access to the British State Papers, the papers of the Secretary of State from Henry VIII’s accession in 1509 to 1782. Covering a wide range of documents, subjects, and importance, they concern internal English/British affairs and administration of the country, and foreign affairs, marriage alliances, treaties and wars. Here are original letters written by Henry VIII and subsequent monarchs, ministers, officials and clerks, together with those sent from European rulers and their officials, and the people of Britain of all social levels. These papers are a major source for Early Modern Studies of Britain and Europe.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland provides access to both the 'Old' Statistical Account (1791-99), under the direction of Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, and the 'New' Statistical Account (1834-45). These accounts offer rich and detailed parish reports for the whole of Scotland, covering a vast range of topics including agriculture, education, trades, religion and social customs. Please note, we do not have a subscription to this resource, but the content is freely available.

Complete digital edition of the Times (London) newspaper from 1785-2019. Access is on the Gale platform and this product can also be searched as part of Gale Primary Sources.

Please note that we also have electronic access to current issues of The Times on the Gale platform and also via other databases. Current content can be accessed via the SUPrimo record for 'The Times', or can be searched as part of Gale OneFile News.

UK Parliamentary Papers (formerly House of Commons Parliamentary Papers) contains Sessional Papers (e.g. House of Commons Papers, Command Papers and Public Bills) from 1715 to the 2009/10 parliamentary session. UKPP also provides access to supplementary parliamentary material back to 1688 including material from the House of Lords. Full-text of papers from session 2010-11 onwards is available via the Public Information Online service.

Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, offering a number of data collections. Historic Digimap contains historical Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain.

Please note - downloading data for use in GIS or CAD applications requires specialised software which is NOT available on PCs in the Library.

Access to the Mass Observation Project. Launched in 1981 by the University of Sussex as a rebirth of the original 1937 Mass Observation, its founders' aim was to document the social history of Britain by recruiting volunteers to write about their lives and opinions.

This collection consists of the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation in the 1980s, 1990s and between 2000 and 2009; and the thousands of responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers. This is a useful resource for anyone researching British social history in the period between 1980 and 2009.

See also Mass Observation Online.