You may also find the History Primary Sources page useful as well.
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.
Organisation who stimulate interest in and care for the history and character of the city.
Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History
A comprehensive source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain, including the Round Foundry in Leeds.
A collection of research in to the early days of the Leeds engine building industry.
Scarborough Archaeological and Historical Society
Resources and information about the history of Scarborough. Includes an archive of photographs collected by the Scarborough Community Archive.
Links to archival information on Leeds, including the Leeds Civic Trust's photographic archive.
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.
We have access to The British Library Newspapers collections part I and II, containing 71 titles:
Part I: 1800-1900
Ranging from early tabloids like the Illustrated Police News to radical papers like the Chartist Northern Star, publications in Part I span a vast range of national, regional, and local interests. Other notable papers of Part I include the Morning Chronicle, with famous contributors such as Henry Mayhew and John Stewart Mill; the Graphic, publishing both illustrations and news as well as illustrated fiction; and the Examiner, the radical reformist and leading intellectual journal. Part I contains 49 titles that were selected by an academic advisory board for their importance for the study of the period.
Part II: 1800-1900
Part II further expands the range of English regional newspapers and the political views represented in the programme. Researchers can find the newspapers of a number of significant towns and regions included in this collection: Nottingham, Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield, and York, as well as North Wales. The addition of two major London newspapers, The Standard and the Morning Post, helps capture conservative opinion in the nineteenth century, balancing the progressive, more liberal views of the newspapers that appear in Part I.
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.
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.
AP Archive is the film and video archive of The Associated Press (AP), one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent news gathering. The collection includes over 1.7 million global news and entertainment video stories dating back to 1895. Hours of new video footage is added daily with coverage from AP's global news gathering network. Also contains access to British Movietone, the world’s greatest newsreel archive, spanning the period 1895 – 1986.
A large range of films on art produced in the UK since the 1950s, and a unique record of British and international post-war art, as well as of documentary film-making in the UK. The archive gives online video streaming of all 450 films made by the film department of Arts Council England between 1953 and 1998 and several films produced until 2003 by the dance department of ACE.
Providing a collection of archival film footage from the past 120 years which has been collected by the British Film Institute. These include collections on comedy, female filmmakers, LGBT Britain, animation and lots more.
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.
British Pathé is one of the oldest media companies in the world. By the time Pathé finally stopped producing the cinema newsreel in 1970 they had accumulated 3,500 hours of filmed history amounting to over 90,000 individual items. Whereas all professional usages still require a licence fee, there are free "preview" facilities on this site.
The Yorkshire Film Archive is a registered charity which finds, preserves and provides public access to moving image made in or about the Yorkshire region.
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.
*28/9/23 - if unable to access, please clear your cache/cookies or use an alternative browser eg Microsoft Edge
More than 2 million images from 300 collections, which are updated monthly. The images are curated from reliable sources that have been rights-cleared for use in education and research. Images can be found on a range of subjects, including: anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art, history, fashion and costume, literature, religion, world history and more.
You can download images and image details individually. Once you have logged in using your username and password you will have to register for a free account in order to download. Register using your student email address and by registering you will be able to access saved folders and organize images into groups.
An educational & cultural research resource of primary sources exploring 100 years of youth culture through the scenes, styles, and sounds that forged them. From Rave, Punk, Rockabilly to Grime. From the world’s leading collection of youth culture history.
All content is downloadable in screen resolution for internal education usage only.
The British Library has uploaded one million public domain scans from 17th-19th century books to Flickr. The images are maps, geological diagrams, illustrations, comical satire, illuminated and decorative letters, illustrations, landscapes, wall-paintings and more scanned from 65,000 volumes held by the British Library and they can be used and adapted for any purpose.
Online database of the British Museum's Collections, including more than 800,000 images.
Europeana Art introduces you to artists and artworks from across Europe. Explore over 1 million paintings, drawings, prints and other artworks from European public and private archives, galleries and museums, ranging from ancient Roman sculpture to modern design.
Over 3,500 high-resolution images of pictures, engravings, and extracts scanned from old rare antique and vintage books. Medium-resolution images are can downloaded and used freely without copyright restrictions.
Photographic publishers since 1860, this website enables people to share images of their local region. So far there are photos and maps from of 7,273 UK towns and villages.
The photographs on ViewFinder are all held in the Historic England Archive. They date from the 1850s and are a resource for people interested in England's social, industrial, architectural and archaeological history.
Images primarily focused on Britain and the Commonwealth, from World War I to the present. Many images may be downloaded and used for educational purposes only. The rights must be checked for each individual image.
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.
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE magazine's photo archive, from the 1750s to today. Images include famous personalities as well as photos of historical and cultural events.
National Archives Image Library
Browse or search over 70,000 digitised images spanning hundreds of years of history from The National Archives' unique collections, from ancient maps to iconic advertising. Images are hallmarked but are still a great record of historical images.
Offers free low resolution downloads of prints, painting, and photographs related to historic gardens and estates that are under the National Trust’s care.
Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
PPOC contains catalogue records and digital images from the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The collections include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people.
Queen Victoria was an avid journal writer and described her daily life not only in writing but also in drawings and watercolours. A keen artist from an early age, the Queen made numerous sketches of her homes and family, the places she visited and the people she met. A selection of her works is presented here. Some were drawn directly into her journals as illustrations of her diary entries, while others are taken from her albums and sketchbooks, housed in the Print Room at Windsor Castle.
Visual Arts Data Service (VADS)
This is an important online resource for visual arts. It has built up a considerable portfolio of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images. They are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research.
Here you can peruse 27,000 works and over 43,000 images from the V&A collections. These are provided free for educational use.
Images on this site are freely available for download for personal, academic teaching or study use and it is great for social history.
Even if an image is "free" it should still be acknowledged if you use it. A Harvard reference for an online image would look like this:
Norfolk, S. (2016) Oscar Niemeyer staircase [Online image]. Available from: <http://www.simonnorfolk.com/meanderings/meander-01>
You can find guidelines for referencing images and other sources on Skills for Learning.
