In this section of the Library's Moodle space you will find resources and activities to help you develop your information searching skills.
Through this link you will find more information about accessing Senate House's physical and online resources, as well as information about accessing libraries at other institutions.
An index of bibliographic information on journal articles and books on British and Irish history since 1900. In addition to the publications, the Bibliography provides links to help you find the items that it lists in research libraries.
Help pack for students and lecturers
Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. It provides indexing to more than 2,300 academic historical journals in over 40 languages back to 1955.
Areas of interest to medievalists include Classics, English Language and Literature, History and Archaeology, Theology and Philosophy, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Music, and Theatre.
A multi-disciplinary databases with access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines, as well as over 3 million images.
Quick tips on searching JSTOR
An index of bibliographic information on journal articles and books on British and Irish history since 1900. In addition to the publications, the Bibliography provides links to help you find the items that it lists in research libraries.
Help pack for students and lecturers
A digital collection of more than 180,000 titles published in Great Britain and its colonies during the Eighteenth century.
Scanned images, and full-text digital versions where available, of over 125,000 books published in English up to 1700.
Areas of interest to medievalists include Classics, English Language and Literature, History and Archaeology, Theology and Philosophy, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Music, and Theatre.
Oxford Handbooks in History bring together the world's leading scholars to discuss research and the latest thinking in a range of major topics in History. searching help
A 50-volume e-book library of historical sources covering the period 300-800AD, many available in English for the first time
Award-winning collections spanning the social sciences and humanities, developed in collaboration with leading libraries and archives. Discover millions of pages of unique primary source content on important themes such as: Borders and Migrations, Gender and Sexuality, Global History, and War and Conflict.
Discover the history of global politics and international relations from the pivotal nineteenth and twentieth centuries through this broad collection of UK government files sourced from The National Archives, UK.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender, the largest collection available in support of the study of gender and sexuality, enables scholars to make new connections in LGBTQ history and activism, cultural studies, psychology, health, political science, policy studies, and other related areas of research.
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents. 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.
This primary source collection details the extensive work of African Americans to abolish slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War. Covering the period 1830-1865, the collection presents the international impact of African American activism against slavery, in the writings of the activists themselves. Black Abolitionist Papers represents a huge effort by a scholarly team, headed by C. Peter Ripley and George E. Carter, who recognized that African Americans were a pivotal and persuasive force in the 19th-century anti-slavery movement.
Offers the opportunity to study the most well-known and also unheralded events of the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the men, women, and sometimes even children who waged one of the most inspiring social movements in American history. This category consists of the NAACP Papers and federal government records, organizational records, and personal papers regarding the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century.
Black Studies Center is a fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more.
Black Thought and Culture provides approximately 100,000 pages of monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders within the black community from the earliest times to the present. The collection is intended for research in black studies, political science, American history, music, literature, and art.
Border and Migration Studies Online provides historical context and resources, representing both personal and institutional perspectives, for the growing fields of border(land) studies and migration studies, as well as history, law, politics, diplomacy, area and global studies, anthropology, medicine, the arts, and more.
A digital archive of over 100,000 pages of letters written over a span of 300 years, as well as biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of the sources in the database.
Searching help for this resource
Key primary and secondary sources for the history of the British Isles, including parliamentary, church and taxation records, calendars, gazeteers and the Victoria County Histories.
How to use British History Online
Contains full runs of influential national and regional newspapers representing different political and cultural segments of British society. We have access to:
British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741-1950
British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732-1950
British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950
British Library Newspapers, Part VI: Ireland,1783-1950
Senate House Library offers access to parts I and II
More than 460 periodical runs published between the 1860s and the 1930s, covering a range of subjects; from magisterial quarterlies and scholarly and professional organs through to coterie art periodicals, penny weeklies and illustrated family magazines. Notable authors include Walter Bagehot, Aubrey Beardsley, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Ford Madox Ford, W. M. Rossetti, and Tobias Smollett. Also, original periodical versions of many literary works are included, for example as well as De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Gaskell's North and South and Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles.
Help with searching this resource
Offers access to over 7,000 hand-written documents and more than 40,000 bibliographic records. In addition to Britain's colonial relations with the Americas and other European rivals for power, this collection also covers the Caribbean and Atlantic world. It is an invaluable resource for scholars of early American history, British colonial history, Caribbean history, maritime history, Atlantic trade, plantations, and slavery.
An archive of the Daily Mail from 1896 including Atlantic editions between 1923 to 1931.
Access is via Gale Primary Sources.
Explore past landscapes and visualise change through time with Historic Digimap. Access to scanned maps of Great Britain dating back to 1840 with the ability to view maps from different times side-by-side making visual comparisons easy.
One person in seven experiences disability, yet the story of this community and its contributions is largely absent from the scholarly record. Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement is a landmark online collection that fills the gap, with a comprehensive and international set of resources to enrich study in a wide range of disciplines from media studies to philosophy.
The Fortunoff Archive provides access to over 4,400 testimonies.
You need to register for an account before searching the Archive. If you are off campus, you will need to be connected to the College VPN.
A collection of historical archives (modern to present), newspapers and periodicals (17th to 19th centuries) including:
Archives Unbound
Daily Mail Historical Archive
The Economist Historical Archive
The Illustrated London News Historical Archive
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Series 2, Empire)
Political Extremism and Radicalism
The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
British State Papers and links these rare historical manuscripts to their fully text-searchable Calendars. We have access to Part 3, covering Domestic Papers from 1603-1714
Help with searching British State Papers online
Comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010; including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects.
Searching help
A multi-disciplinary databases with access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines, as well as over 3 million images.
Quick tips on searching JSTOR
Contains colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London.
How to use London low life: A short video tutorial
From the terror of the Black Death to the drama of the Norman invasion, Manchester Medieval Sources brings alive the reality of life in the medieval world through these first hand accounts, many translated into English for the first time.
How to use Medieval Sources Online
Research Source provides digital access to over 8 million pages of primary source materials selected from the extensive microfilm back catalogue of Adam Matthew Publications. From Renaissance literature to 20th-century global politics, Research Source brings a vast and varied array of sources to students and researchers in eleven thematic modules, covering key subject areas and supporting multi-disciplinary research.
Revolution and Protest Online explores the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present. Organized around more than thirty events and areas, representing a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, this collection includes 175 hours of video, 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches), and more than 1,000 images.
This freely accessible database from the Wiener Holocaust Library shares eyewitness accounts from the Holocaust.
A 50-volume e-book library of historical sources covering the period 300-800AD, many available in English for the first time
An archival research resource containing a vast collection of rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during the First World War. Over 1,500 periodicals written and illustrated by serving members of the armed forces and associated welfare organisations published between 1914 and the end of 1919 are included. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover, in full colour or greyscale, and with granular indexing of all articles and specialist indexing of Publications.
Comprehensive document set shedding light on the U.S. intelligence community’s spying and analytic efforts in the Arab world, including the Middle East, the Near East, and North Africa. It covers the time period from the end of World War II to the present day, up until the 2002-2003 Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) assessments, the Global War on Terror, the Iraq War, and Iran’s nuclear program.
The Visual History Archive (VHA) contains over 50,000 digitized interviews of testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide, including the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda (1994), Armenian Genocide (1915-23), European Holocaust (1939-45), Guatemalan Genocide (1978-96), and the Nanjing Massacre (1937). More information about the VHA (ProQuest guide)
An archival research resource comprising the backfiles of leading women's interest consumer magazines. Issues are scanned in high-resolution color and feature detailed article-level indexing. Coverage ranges from the late-19th century through to 2005 and these key primary sources permit the examination of the events, trends, and attitudes of this period. Among the research fields served by this material are gender studies, social history, economics/marketing, media, fashion, politics, and popular culture.
Features collections from the Schlesinger Library, Margaret Sanger Papers, and records of National Woman's Party, Women's Action Alliance.
Women and Social Movements, International is a landmark collection of primary materials. Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life.
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820 explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women’s voices. With a clear focus on bringing the voices of the colonized to the forefront, this highly-curated archive and database includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 is a resource for students and scholars of U.S. history and U.S. women's history. Organized around the history of women in social movements in the U.S. between 1600 and 2000, this collection seeks to advance scholarly debates and understanding about U.S. women’s history generally and at the same time make those insights accessible to teachers and students at universities, colleges, and high schools.
BoB is a viewing and off-air recording and media archive service which allows you to search for, watch and also record from a list of recorded channels. You can also create clips, search for programmes coming up, create playlists and share them with others.
BoB is only available in the UK.
A collection of historical archives (modern to present), newspapers and periodicals (17th to 19th centuries) including:
Archives Unbound
Daily Mail Historical Archive
The Economist Historical Archive
The Illustrated London News Historical Archive
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals (Series 2, Empire)
Political Extremism and Radicalism
The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive
Nexis provides access to a wide range of UK and international newspapers. It also includes a collection of in-depth company profiles and industry reports covering millions of public and private companies.
Regional Business News provides full-text regional business publications for the United States and Canadian provinces. You can search newspapers, magazines and other resources from different news sources.
The link below will help you find Royal Holloway PhD theses, UK theses through British Library's EThOS service and theses and dissertations from other countries through ProQuest.
The online version of the OED including over 500,000 definitions, together with etymological analysis and variant spellings. Traces the development of English from 1150 AD to the present.
Video tutorial on using the Oxford English Dictionary
Over 100 general reference works, language dictionaries and subject dictionaries covering languages, science and medicine, humanities, social sciences and business.
A series of online research guides in a range of subjects including American Literature, British and Irish Literature, Cinema and Media Studies, Environmental Science, Victorian Literature,Geography, Classics and Philosophy. Each guide contains a series of articles introducing key topics, and lists recommended readings about each topic.
Video user guide (YouTube)