History: Online primary sources

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.

Scran is an online learning service from the charity Historic Environment Scotland. It contains over 490,000 images and media from museums, galleries, and archives. It provides access to resources relating to Scotland's culture and heritage.

Scran is an online learning service from the charity Historic Environment Scotland. It contains over 490,000 images and media from museums, galleries, and archives. It provides access to resources relating to Scotland's culture and heritage.

Previously known as Archival Sound Recordings, British Library Sounds is an archive of sound recordings from all over the world. Topics include: oral history, accents and dialects, environment and nature and music. Recordings come from the British Library's sound archives.

This service from Alexander Street provides more than 100,000 videos, images, and sound recordings covering a wide range of academic subjects. Formerly known as JISC MediaHub.

Access to over 65,000 digitised items selected from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera covering everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Contents include materials relating to the history of: theatre, the book trade, crime and punishment, design and advertising.

Useful for: Design, History and Journalism.

Access to data from the ESDS (Economic and Social Data Service) and Census data for 1971-2011.
Includes data from International Energy Agency, World Bank, OECD, United Nations, Human Rights Atlas, International Monetary Fund.

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.

Access to The Irish Times newspaper from 1859 - 2019.

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.

The Economist Historical Archive delivers a complete searchable copy of every issue of The Economist from 1843 to 2020. Full-colour images, multiple search indexes, and the facility to browse each and every issue - all combine to offer a unique primary source covering the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Financial Times Historical Archive is a complete searchable and browsable copy of every issue of The Financial Times from 1888 to 2016.

Access to over 26,000 digitised pamphlets covering the 19th century. Useful for those researching the history, politics and society of the time period.

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.

The London Stage is a reference work documenting theatrical performances in eighteenth-century London. The resource covers performances from the period 1660-1800. Information has been compiled from the playbills, newspapers and theatrical diaries of the period. It is possible to search by actor, role, performance, theatre or date.

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.

Covers the period 1886-1903 and provides access to poverty maps and police notebooks.

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.

A collection of primary source material exploring the migration of peoples from Great Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and Asia to the New World and Australasia. Sources include: letters, travel journals, diaries, oral histories, maps, pamphlets, official publications and shipping papers. Covers the period 1800 - 1924.

Access to a wide range of primary source materials which focuses on race relations across social, political, cultural and religious arenas.

The resource focuses on Atlanta, Chicago, Brooklyn, and towns and cities in North Carolina. Materials accessible from the African American Communities resource include pamphlets, newspaper and periodicals, letters, official records, photographs, maps and oral history materials.

Themes covered include: desegregation, urban renewal and housing problems, civil rights activities and protests, race relations and community integration and African American culture.

Covers the period 1863-1986.

Created from the Library Company of Philadelphia's Afro-Americana Collection, this resource contains more than 1000 fully searchable works by and about African Americans from the years 1883 to 1922. Content includes eyewitness accounts and official reports, as well as printed works of fiction, poetry and drama.

The American Slavery Collection is a digitised collection of the American Antiquarian Society's holdings of slavery and abolition materials. This searchable database contains over 3,600 diverse works including books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, sheet music, graphic arts and other ephemera. Subjects include religion, suffrage, the slave trade and many more.

Formerly titled 'War, State and Society'. The 'British Society, 1939-1951' resource provides access to thousands of documents from the collections of eleven U.K. government departments, each responsible for dealing with and reporting on the domestic situation in Britain during the Second World War and its aftermath. Sourced from The National Archives (U.K.) and the History of Advertising Trust, these files provide an insight into the social, economic, political and cultural affairs of wartime Britain, and a snapshot of day-to-day life in every corner of the country and beyond. This resource is cross-searchable with Secret Files from World War to Cold War on the History Commons platform.

The Civil Rights in America collection covers the period from early 19th to late 20th century. This fully searchable database contains U.S. congressional publications and other primary source material relating to American civil rights. Topics and themes of the resource include civil rights, attitudes towards race, immigration policy, gender and ethnicity, sexual discrimination and women's suffrage.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) selected, transcribed and translated foreign-language broadcast and print news items as part of its intelligence gathering operations. This database encompasses a portion of the FBIS archive from the Cold War focused on key issues, events and people of that era. It contains essential perspectives from key Communist Bloc and developing world news sources, for the period 1945-1991.

This resource provides access to over 2300 formerly classified U.S. government documents (most of them classified Top Secret or higher). It provides readers with the documentary record of the successes and failures of the U.S. intelligence community in its efforts to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This document collection covers the period from the end of World War II in 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but also includes a number of formerly classified historical reports and articles written by U.S. intelligence historians since the end of the Cold War. It will be of interest to anyone researching, studying or teaching the history of politics of this time period.

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.

This online archive contains a unique selection of British Foreign Office records documenting the various peace treaties signed at the end of the First World War and their consequences thereafter. Sourced from the UK National Archives and British Library.

A useful resource for anyone studying or researching maritime history. The atlas from Prize Papers Online makes available a sample of the Prize Papers’ interrogations. Providing a wealth of information about ships and their crews, the interrogations are part of the Prize Paper Archive. These interrogations provide insights into the workings of the maritime sector during the Age of Sail. The data available on Prize Papers Online: Atlas covers the period between 1775 and 1783. 199 records are available with interrogations.

Explore digitised resources relating to the struggle for civil rights in America through the eyes and work of sociologists, activists, psychologists, teachers, ministers, students and housewives. Key themes include:
Desegregation of schools, industries and public transport;
Migration of African Americans from the rural south to urban centres;
The role of the church in the Civil Rights Movement;
Race riots and other racial tensions;
Activities of the Civil Rights Movement.

Contents include primary sources such as audio recordings, photographs, scrapbooks, survey material, posters and case studies. Secondary sources are also included, e.g. an interactive map, a data association tool, contextual essays, thematic guides and more.

Covers the period 1928-1970.

The Routledge History of Feminism resource covers the period of the long nineteenth century (1776-1928). It includes primary and secondary resources including books, chapters, journal articles and more. Themes of the resource are: politics and law; religion and belief; education; literature and writings; women at home; society and culture; empire and movements and ideologies.

The Runaway Slaves in Eighteenth-Century Britain project provides access to over 800 newspaper advertisements placed by masters and owners seeking the capture and return of enslaved and bound people who had escaped. The principal sources for this project are English and Scottish newspapers published between 1700 and 1780.

Drawn primarily from the records of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) at The National Archives, UK, this British Online Archives collection reveals the relationship between the SOE and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) – forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency – during the Second World War.

This resource provides access to declassified information about the US intelligence community in the Far East during the Cold War. It covers the period 1945-1991. Countries covered include: China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Australia.

A collection of over 4,000 formerly classified U.S. government documents provides a comprehensive survey of the U.S. intelligence community’s activities in Europe between 1945 and 1995.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Spanning four key twentieth-century conflicts, with a spotlight on the Second World War, Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War provides access to British government secret intelligence and foreign policy files from 1873 to 1953. This resource is cross-searchable with British Society, 1939-1951 on the History Commons platform.

Archives Unbound contains subject based digital collections of historical documents covering a broad range of topics including: American history, British history, European history, Gender Studies, History of Health and Medicine, Journalism and Literature.

The Churchill Archive is the complete digitisation of all Winston S. Churchill’s personal papers, official and private correspondence held at the Churchill Archive Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge. The Archive features more than 800,000 pages of private letters, speeches, notes, manuscripts, government transcripts and other key historical documents of international importance covering the period between 1874 and 1965. The Churchill Archive also provides access to specially commissioned articles about the contents of the archive.

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.

Early European Books traces the history of printing in Europe from its origins to the end of the seventeenth century. It provides full text access to materials from up to the end of the seventeenth century. Strathclyde has access to Early European Books Collections 1 to 4 on the ProQuest platform.

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.