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.
Interactive map created by students from Leeds Beckett University’s Public History Project module, detailing different commemorative sites in the city. Each statue, monument and mural has a description explaining who is being commemorated and why. You can read more about the project here. Members of the public who know of monuments or murals that are not currently listed are also encouraged to use an online form so that the map can be added to over time.
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.
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.
Core records of the British Cabinet from 1915 to 1982 have been digitised, and their full text is searchable online from these web pages.
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.
UK legislation from 1267-present. Also includes Scottish Parliament, National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly legislation, and legislation originating from the EU.
Extensive website from the National Archives, including their digitised downloadable records. Includes detailed research guides to help you research people, places and subjects.
National Archives guide that explains how to access the historical censuses from 1841 to 1921 online.
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 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.
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.
Gives access to the enormous range of nineteenth-century periodical literature an invaluble resource, of interest to historians and students of nineteenth-century literature and culture, empire, feminism, the history of the book, the creative and performing arts, sport and leisure, science and medicine, the professions, in short, of all aspects of nineteenth-century life that the press encompassed.
Gives access to digital collections of historical documents. Topics include African American studies; Asian studies; British history; Holocaust studies; LGBT studies; Middle East studies; political science; religious studies and women’s studies.
This archive connects collections from UK universities, covering astronomy, biology, technology, industrial design, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, agriculture, meteorology, physics, history of science and STEM, and government grants for scientific research. It contains administrative records, correspondence, illustrations, manuscripts, photographs, prototypes, clippings, personal papers, gray literature—all presented as fully searchable digital images that can be analyzed, downloaded, manipulated, and compared with content from other societies and universities.
More than 200,000 fully-catalogued British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines. Artwork dates from 19th century to the present day, by over 300 artists. Covers all areas of British political cartoons and caricature and covers these themes extensively: political commentary of 20th century; Victorian and Edwardian caricature; Societal commentary; World wars; Domestic life.
Digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
Listen to a selection from the British Library’s extensive collections of unique sound recordings, which come from all over the world and cover the entire range of recorded sound: music, drama and literature, oral history, wildlife and environmental sounds.
To access this resource, click on log in where it says Please log in via your home organisation, choose Leeds Beckett University from the drop down list and click on Select.
Provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
Early European Books provides scholars with new ways of accessing and exploring all works printed in Europe before 1701, drawing together a diverse array of printed sources, regardless of language, as well as works published further afield. Developed and produced in close collaboration with scholars, rare book librarians, bibliographers, and other experts from the library world, this resource offers full-colour, high-resolution facsimile images of some of the world's most significant collections of early printed books in Europe.
An interdisciplinary collection of journals, monographs and 2,500 manuscript pages, spanning from 1780s to the present. Titles and resources across the arts, humanities, and sciences in disciplines such as music, art, history, literature, archaeology, mathematics, and biology.
Provides access to literary manuscripts, rare printed works, and personal papers of a range of leading literary figures in British and American literature , as well as unique access to a rare and obscure literary texts and genres.
This resource offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. Explore original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation, as well as printed publications, photographs and interactive features.
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. Still growing, it is one of the most important sources available for qualitative social data in the UK. This collection consists of the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation between 1980 and 2010 and the thousands of responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers.
Facimilies of six 19th-century periodicals and newspapers: Monthly Repository (1806-1837), Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Northern Star (1838-1852), Leader (1850-1860), English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Tomahawk (1867-1870), and Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890).
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 is a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published. Contains 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.
Offers access to rare literary sources related to William Wordsworth and the Romantic period. The collection offers an insight into the working methods of the poet and the wider social, political and natural environment that shaped much of his work and that of his contemporaries. The collection also makes available the writings of Dorothy Wordsworth through her Grasmere Journals, Alfoxden diary and travel journals as well as verse manuscripts and correspondence from leading authors of the Romantic period such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey. Also included are over 2,500 fine art pieces from the Wordsworth Trust’s fine art collection.
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.
Allows you to conduct historical research across multiple Gale primary source databases, which include Archives Unbound, British Library Newspapers, Daily Mail Historical Archive, Gale Literature, 19th Century UK Periodicals, 17th-18th Century Newspapers, and the Times Digital Archive.
You can also find a list of our individual newspaper archives on the News Resources page here which include:
Provides access to historical maps and map data of Great Britain, published between 1846 and 1996. You can compare 2 maps of the same area side-by-side so you can see how an area has changed over time. 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.
An easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world.
It allows the user to search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date.
British Library digitised manuscripts
Historical and literary manuscripts from the British Library's collection, now made available online.
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).
