[updted 15 June 2022]

You may or may not know that the British Library offers remote access to a small selection of their electronic resources if you are a registered Reader Pass holder.

The list of those databases which are now available under this arrangement has grown.

They include the following which are not available in Oxford:

• African Newspapers, Series 1 & 2, 1800-1934
• American Broadsides and Ephemera
• American Civil War: Letters and Diaries
• American Indian Histories and Cultures
• Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century: Federal Government Records & Organizational Records and Personal Papers, Parts 1 & 2
• Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1903-1982
• British Online Archives all collections including:
  • BBC Handbooks and Listener Research
  • Colonial and Missionary records
  • Colonial Law in Africa, 1808-1966
  • Communist Party of Great Britain
  • Industrial Revolution
  • Kenya under colonial rule, in Government reports, 1907-1964
  • records of Britain’s relationship with the Americas, Asia and Africa
  • War diaries from the Imperial War Museum: The Great War
• British records on the Atlantic World, 1700-1900
• Caribbean Newspapers 1718-1876
• China, America and the Pacific
• China: Culture and Society
• China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980
• Communist Historical Newspapers Collection 1919-2013
• Communist Party of Great Britain
• Confidential Print: Latin America
• Creation of Israel: British Foreign Office Correspondence on Palestine and Transjordan, 1940-1948
• Early American Newspapers, Series 1 & 2
• Everyday Life and Women in America c 1810-1920
• Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive 1880-2015
• Foreign Broadcast Information Service 1941-1934
• Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan
• Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange
• History Vault: African American Police League Records, 1961-1988
• History Vault: Struggle for Women’s Rights, 1880-1990: Organizational Records
• Meiji Japan
• Men’s Magazine Archive
• Le Monde, 1944-2000 (part of ProQuest Historical Newspapers)
• The Nixon Years
• Rand Daily Mail 1902-1985
• Records of the Raj
• South Asian Newspapers 1864-1922
• Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History [covers 1835-1976]

If you don’t have a reader pass, then check if / how you can register with the BL.

If you have a reader pass, then check how to can extend it.

Email Customer-Services@bl.uk in the first instance if you have any problems accessing the resources.

Also useful:

• Databases A-Z (Oxford resources)
• Other electronic resources available in the BL which are not in Oxford.