Digital Collections for Education and Research
These are links to websites and resources online which aren't archival resources, but which you might find useful in your research. All content on these sites is maintained by the site itself, not the Archives Hub.
Maps and gazetteers
Addressing History (addressinghistory.edina.ac.uk) links digitised historical Scottish Post Office Directories to contemporaneous historical maps, with a 'crowdsourcing' tool to allow the community to correct, geo-code and enhance the data.
Bomb Sight (www.bombsight.org) offers access to information on London locations bombed during the 1940-41 Blitz and associated source material, such as photographs taken near locations and memories from those living nearby.
Historical Gazetteer of England's Place Names (placenames.org.uk) allows users to search modern place names and find historical variants of that place name, dating as far back as the Anglo-Saxon period. It is an extension of the work of the English Place-Name Society, which began 90 years ago.
Pleiades (pleiades.stoa.org) holds historical information and research about the Ancient Greek and Roman worlds in a geographical context, using the tool of interactive mapping to store and display content.
Aggregators
Connected Histories (www.connectedhistories.org). Bringing together a wide range of digital history resources – from family and local history, through religion, politics and government, to the history of entertainment – Connected Histories offers powerful natural language search tools to allow you to make new connections across a rich body of material.
Fihrist (www.fihrist.org.uk). This searchable catalogue provides electronic access for the first time to over 3000 basic descriptions of Islamic manuscripts in the holdings of the Bodleian and Cambridge University libraries. Including both Persian and Arabic manuscripts the wide subject coverage includes literature, religion, philosophy, poetry, mathematics, astronomy and medicine.
Manuscripts Online (www.manuscriptsonline.org) features a wide range of written primary sources, dating from the beginning of the 11th century to the end of the 15th century. Sources include early printed books, literary manuscripts and historical documents.
Transatlantic Archaeology gateway (archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/TAG/intro.jsf) allows you to cross search the ADS (the national repository for UK historic environment data) and the Digital Archaeological record (tDAR, United States) via a simple to use query-builder. Results link directly to the two repositories allowing you to quickly access relevant datasets for your research.
Welsh Voices of the Great War Online (www.cardiff.ac.uk/share/research/projectreports/welshvoices/). From letters and postcards through drawings and photographs, to medals and objects collected from the front, this resource presents a superb collection of material connected to the Great War collected from Welsh families. Items were sought and digitised at roadshows across Wales, and reveal the poignant stories of servicemen at the front and their families at home.
Digitisations
Marandet Collection of French Plays (https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/marandet), an archive of French theatre scripts from the 18th and 19th centuries, originally amassed by the French actor and playwright Amédée Marandet, and offering an insight into popular drama in France during key times of change and upheaval within the country.
Methodist Missionary Collection (digital.info.soas.ac.uk/cgi/c/Methodist_missionary_society/Methodist%20Missionary%20Society%20_Homepage) ranges from the late 18th century to the mid-20th century and includes material from overseas missionary work in Europe, North America, West Indies, Africa, India, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], China, Burma and Australasia. More than 4,000 glass lantern slides - which were used to illustrate lectures and reports from the 1920s to the 1940s - have been digitised and are now available online, with their accompanying scripts.
