Leeds Beckett Archive and Special Collections
The Archive and Special Collections at Leeds Beckett University are held at the Headingley Library. They include an archive of material relating to the history of the University, as well as collections such as the archive of West Yorkshire Society of Architects Library and the Tom Pevsner Collection. Some material and images are also available online.
Leodis: a photographic archive of Leeds
Leodis is an online photographic archive containing over 59,000 images of Leeds, old and new. It is managed by the Leeds Library and Information Service. As well as photos there are also 5,500 playbills from the library collections offering a unique view of theatre life in Leeds from 1781 to the 1990s.
Information and images on the history of Leeds, put together by the Leeds Library and Information Services. Includes sections on industrial Leeds and the waterfront.
Discussion forum dedicated to investigating mysterious or unusual aspects of the built environment of Leeds.
A really useful collection of videos that you can use for local historical / contextual research. The Yorkshire Film Archive is a registered charity which finds, preserves and provides public access to moving image made in or about the Yorkshire and the North East of England.
Primary sources refer to documents or other items that provide first-hand, eyewitness accounts of events. They are either from people who had a direct connection with the event, or they are information compiled during the time of the event. Historians use primary sources as the raw evidence to analyse and interpret the past and there is no better way to understand events in the past than by examining the sources that people from that period left behind. Below are a range of different primary sources, and you can also find more on the Images and Video page.
This collection, created by RLUK (Research Libraries UK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. Pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day.
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars, researchers, and students at the college and university level. A multi-disciplinary resource, collections cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history. Particular strengths include U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.
Digitised versions of more than 65,000 out-of-copyright editions from the 19th century, spanning the years 1789-1914. A wide range of subject areas are covered, including philosophy, history, poetry and literature.
This database is hosted on the JISC Historical Texts platform.
A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 344 full text literature journals, and other key criticism and reference resources.
Offers access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. This digital project is a multi-faceted resource, offering integrated access to the new online material, existing microfilm series, and the Mass-Observation Archive itself, allowing the user options to search across the entire Archive or by material available digitally.
In this databases you can search and view the collection of over 66,000 digitised European medical publications from the nineteenth century. The subject areas covered include topics such as consumer health, sport and fitness, food and nutrition as well as medicine and medical practices.
Research tool allowing researchers to access primary material depicting key elements of nineteenth century popular culture, including spiritualism in Victorian Britain, the circus, pleasure gardens, advertising and music hall. Primary material in the collection includes books, pamphlets, journals, posters, photographs, prints, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, theatre tickets, architectural design plans, scripts, programmes and playbills.
Sessional papers including page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with detailed indexing. Collections for the 18th, 19th & 20th Centuries and Hansard 1803-2005 are available.
House of Commons Publications and Papers
Current information from both Houses, previous Hansard debates and latest select committee reports. Explore research from the parliamentary libraries and find out how to access the archives.
Extensive website from the National Archives, including their digitised downloadable records. Includes detailed research guides to help you research people, places and subjects.
Great Britain Historical Database Online Documentation
A large integrated database of geographically-located historical statistics for Great Britain, mainly drawn from the period 1851-1939.
Histpop - The Online Historical Population Reports Website
The Online Historical Population Reports (OHPR) collection provides online access to the complete British population reports for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937.
A Vision of Britain Through Time
Created by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project based in the Department of Geography of the University of Portsmouth, includes maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.
A comprehensive resource funded by the ESRC to support researchers, teachers and policymakers who depend on high-quality social and economic data. It contains single point of access to a wide range of secondary data including large-scale government surveys, international macrodata, business microdata, qualitative studies and census data from 1971 to 2011.
Provides access to historical maps and map data of Great Britain. Data is available either to download, to use with appropriate software such as geographical information systems (GIS) or computer-aided design (CAD), or as online maps.
The British Library Newspapers collection contains full runs of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth century Britain. This new collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as those from both established country or university towns and the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands, as well as Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism, and Home Rule. The penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes are also present in the collection.
17th-18th Century newspapers, pamphlets, and books.
All issues of the Daily Mail between 1896 and 2004 can be searched and browsed.
The issues are direct replicas of the print newspapers and include advertisements, news stories and images that capture 20th century British culture and society.
Allows you to conduct historical research across multiple news sources, including the Daily Mail Historical Archive and the Times Digital Archive. Includes a term frequency option, so you can find out how often a specific word or phrase appears over time - ideal if you want to track the development of ideas in various historical contexts.
This historical newspaper provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily-searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time. The Historical New York Times with Index (1851-2017) provides search capability using subject terms and topics for focused and targeted results in combination with searchable full text, full page, and article-level images from the Historical New York Times.
An online, full text facsimile of 200 years of The Times, detailing every complete page of every issue from 1785 to 2019. This historical newspaper archive allows researchers an unparalleled opportunity to search and view the best-known and most cited newspaper in the world online in its original published context.
A research facility that allows you to retrieve as-published pages from the back catalogues of the Daily Express and Daily Mirror.
British Library Online Resources
Extensive collection of primary sources and analysis from the British Library, covering topics such as Asians in Britain, Abolition, Victorian Britain, Votes for Women, World War One.
British Political Speech Archive
An archive of speeches given by Conservative, Labour and Liberal/Liberal Democrat Party leaders going back to 1895.
Created by the Library of Congress, this provides access to information about historic US newspapers and selected digitized newspaper pages.
Local History Online in England and Wales
A spreadsheet created by historian Sharon Howard listing where to find hundreds of free PDFs of source editions and other volumes produced by local history societies.
Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (NCSE)
Free, online edition of six nineteenth-century periodicals and newspapers. Titles are: Monthly Repository (1806-1837) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Northern Star (1838-1852), Leader (1850-1860), English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Tomahawk (1867-1870), Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890).
This website reproduces as high-resolution colour images every page of the surviving volumes of Queen Victoria's journals. Each page has also been transcribed, allowing for the journals to be searched. A number of specially-commissioned essays have also been included in this resource, to further support the study and understanding of Queen Victoria and her world.
