Databases

The newspapers and news pamphlets, gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757–1817) include more than 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period. Hosted by the British Library.

A selection of 19th-century national and local British newspapers held by the British Library. All newspapers are full text and fully searchable, with full runs of the publication where possible.

This collection of almost 100 women’s, children’s and leisure/sport periodicals Children's, Humour and Leisure/Sport focuses on the birth of modern magazine publishing in the UK between 1800 and 1900. The database allows full-text searching and includes images, approximately 8,000 in colour.

This collection of British magazines, journals and specialty newspapers on the theme of ‘Empire’ addresses the economic as well as the non-mercantile aspects of British expansionism.  

ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) is a fully searchable collection of over 4,000 books in the humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars. Particular strengths of the collection are history of medicine, religion, archaeology, art history and folklore. 

The American Chemical Society (ACS) Legacy Archives provides full text search and instant access to all titles, volumes, issues and articles published by the ACS from 1879 to 1995.

Digitised versions of more than 65,000 19th-century books from the British Library collection, covering philosophy, history, poetry and literature.

British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late 17th century to the early 20th century. Topics covered include literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture. British Periodicals Collection I contains more than 160 journals of the UMI microfilm collection: Early British Periodicals. British Periodicals Collection II contains more than 300 journals from the UMI microfilm collections English Literary Periodicals and British Periodicals in the Creative Arts.

The Cambridge University Press Archive comprises 171 unique titles (plus some additional earlier versions of journals) from 1827 to approximately 1996. Some of the key subject areas covered are history, Asian studies, politics and economics, language, philosophy and religion, medicine and physical sciences.

Proquest’s version of Early English Books Online (EEBO) features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America from 1470-1700, as well as works in English printed elsewhere during that period. From the first book published in English through to the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this collection contains about 100,000 full-text books of nearly 150,000 titles. New content is added once per year.

This is a collection of digital versions of all works printed in Europe before 1701, regardless of language, together with all pre-1701 works in European languages printed further afield.

A selection of e-books. Subject collections include: language and literature, medicine, philosophy, psychology, religion, science and social sciences.

Aims to include every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas between 1701–1800. It consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides and ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the 18th century.

Electronic Enlightenment (EE) provides access to thousands of letters from 6,500 correspondents from the 17th to 19th century. Every conceivable subject is covered by the the greatest thinkers and writers and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. EE also provides biographical information on over 5,000 individuals, with links to over 1,000 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entries.

This includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. HCPP has searchable full text for each paper, along with a detailed subject index.

The Illustrated London News (ILN) archive gives full-text access to the entire run of the ILN from its first publication on 14 May 1842 to its last in 2003. It presents a vivid picture of British and world events, including news of war, disasters, royalty, social affairs, the arts and science.

This collection provides access to thousands of items from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Subjects covered include 19th-century entertainment, the book trade, popular prints, crimes, murders and executions, and advertising.

A collection of 21 Nature Publishing Group journals. Among the subjects covered are: life, physical and applied sciences, and clinical medicine.

The NSTC Project was established in 1983 aims to provide increasingly complete listings of British books printed between 1801–1919. British books are taken to include all books published in Britain, countries colonised under British rule, and the United States of America. All books in English and all translations from English.

A collection of over 59,000 biographies describing the lives of people who have shaped British history and culture worldwide. Each biography offers detailed biographical information drawn from primary and secondary sources. Theme articles are also included.

A guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words – past and present – from across the English-speaking world. As a historical dictionary, the OED is very different from those of current English, in which the focus is on present-day meanings.

This is a subset of 80 full-text journal backfiles in the arts, humanities and social sciences from the Periodicals Archive Online collection, dating from 1891 to 2000.

A fully searchable archive of the British satirical magazine Punch. It includes approximately 7,900 issues (200,000 pages) from all volumes published, including special issues and almanacs.

A database of reproducible laboratory protocols in the Life and Biomedical Sciences. Compiling protocols from Humana’s successful book series, Methods in Molecular Biology, Methods in Molecular Medicine, Methods in Biotechnology, Methods in Pharmacology and Toxicology, and Neuromethods, as well as from a vast number of laboratory handbooks.

Full-text and full-image articles from The Times of London for the years 1785–2019.

Who's Who contains biographical information on over 32,000 people, detailing birthdays, family histories, education, titles, careers, publications and creative works, personal interests, clubs and addresses. Who Was Who collects together the entries of more than 100,000 people who were included in the register but have died since 1897.

The system includes four databases in various languages: American Biographical Archive (English), Archives Biographiques Françaises (French), British Biographical Archive (English), and Deutsches Biographisches Archive (German). It compiles biographical articles from printed reference works published from the 16th to 20th century.

An online, fully searchable collection of history of medicine e-books.

This large number of databases and tools for family history research includes the UK medical registers 1859–1959, London parish records and birth, marriage and death records, UK and US census records.

The AHCI indexes articles form over 1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals from 1975 to the present. Disciplines covered include art, folklore, history, literature, philosophy and religion.

This database provides access to the following BMJ Publishing Group Ltd journals: British Medical Journal (1840–), BNF for Children (2005–), Evidence-Based Medicine (2000–), Journal of Medical Ethics (2000–), Medical Humanities (2000–), Sexually Transmitted Infections (1998–).

The Brill Journal Archive Online provides access to more than 80 journals published by Brill before 2000. The collection has content relevant to biology, the humanities, human rights, international law, science and the social sciences.

The database indexes published papers from conferences, symposia, seminars, colloquia, workshops and conventions worldwide. Two editions cover the sciences and social sciences, from 1945 to the present.

The HPB Database is a collection of catalogue records of items from major European and North American research libraries relating to European printing of the hand-press period (c. 1455–c. 1830). As the digitisation of collections in contributing libraries progresses, more and more catalogue records point to digital presentations of the early printed books.

The comprehensive digitised journal collection of the Institute of Physics from 1874–1998.

A cross-searchable platform containing more than 3.75 million articles from the archives of 450 journals from Brill, the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Institute of Physics, ProQuest, Oxford University Press and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Full-text access to selected scholarly journals collections, including: Arts and Sciences I, Health and General Sciences Collection and Early Journal Content. Coverage dates back to 1665.

Provides access to the digitised version of the Frankfurt and Leipzig book fair catalogues, which offer an overview of German book production between 1594 and 1860.

Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing (PEP) Web is a digital archive of classic psychoanalytic texts. PEP Archive 1, version 10 (1871–2007) contains the full text of 42 psychoanalytic journals, complete versions of 58 classic psychoanalytic texts and all 24 volumes of the standard edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

Popular Medicine in America contains materials from the Library Company of Philadelphia’s extensive collection. It covers the history of ‘popular’ medicine in America during the 19th century, featuring a wide variety of material that was aimed at the general public rather than medical professionals, and which enabled the ordinary person to treat themselves at home using an array of inventive methods and fashionable techniques.

A multidisciplinary database covering the journal literature of the sciences. It indexes more than 5,700 major journals across 164 scientific disciplines. It contains searchable English-language author abstracts for approximately 70 per cent of the articles in the database. Part of Web of Science. Coverage is from 1945 to the present.

A multidisciplinary database, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes more than 1,725 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. Part of Web of Science. Coverage is from 1945 to the present.

Web of Science includes several databases: Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Emerging Sources Citation Index (2015–present only), Book Citation Index, Conference Proceedings Citation Index.