Pride 2023

Happy Pride Month! To celebrate Pride, from 1st to 30th June, we have created a display using a range of e-books which focuses on the history and experiences of the LGBT+ community.

All of these e-books are available for Oxford University members to read remotely – just make sure you sign into SOLO with your ‘Single Sign On’ first. By clicking on the book covers below you can access the SOLO records of a few of the texts featured on our display.

For more information about upcoming events in Oxford celebrating Pride click here.

Re-trial until 25 April: Early Modern England: Society, Culture & Everyday Life, 1500-1700

We decided to repeat a trial of Early Modern England: Society, Culture & Everyday Life, 1500-1700. The trial ends 25 April.

This resource offers access to rare and invaluable sources for examining the lived experience of people in England between 1500 and 1700. From ‘ordinary’ people through to more prominent individuals and families, these documents show how everyday working, family, religious and administrative life was experienced across England.

Rather than dealing specifically with the great political and religious upheavals of these years, the project aims to look at the everyday happenings of people in different parts of England.

What topics can you research?

The sources are useful for the study of many aspects of life in early modern England. They include:

  • Agriculture
  • Arts, literature and culture
  • Births, marriages and deaths
  • Family life and relationships
  • Finance
  • Foreign affairs
  • Health and medicine
  • Land and property
  • Law and order
  • Monarchy
  • Politics and government
  • Possessions
  • Poverty
  • Religion
  • Scholarship: science and humanities
  • Trade and economics
  • Travel
  • War
  • Women’s history
  • Work and employment

What type of documents are included?

These experiences are revealed through a wide range of materials including legal records, family correspondence, tax records, administrative records, wills, inventories, petitions, military papers and commonplace books and more.

There is a strong material culture element to this project with the inclusion of images of everyday objects used in early modern households. Many can be viewed in 360-degree rotation.3 early modern objects: cream coloured cap, a chamberpot, a fire bellowsWhich regions are covered?

The different collections of documents enable a regional comparison, for example with court records from the South East, London, the West Midlands and the North West.A guide to the different collections incl. Commonplace books, local legal documents, quarter sessions, archives, etc.Searching

You can browse or search in many different ways. Useful are, for instance, indices for names, themes, regions and places.

The resource also offers searching of manuscripts using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology. This is still a developing area and results may not always be perfect.

Tell us what you think

The trial ends on 25 April. While there currently is no funding for this resource, your feedback is still helpful to gauge interest amongst the scholarly community. Please email  isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk to comment on the usefulness of the content, who would benefit from it and whether the searching functionality is adequate.

Bibliographie de l’histoire de France (BHF) now in Databases A-Z

Snippted from Eugène Delacroix's La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830): A woman of the people with a Phrygian cap personifying the concept of Liberty leads a varied group of people forward over a barricade and the bodies of the fallen.

Snippet from Eugène Delacroix’s La Liberté guidant le peuple (1830)

Are you looking for critical readings on French history? The Bibliographie de l’histoire de France (formerly Bibliographie annuelle de l‘histoire de France) will be able to help you.

BHF is a freely accessible bibliographic and historiographical tool for anyone interested in the history of France. It indexes a large number of French and foreign journals and lists articles, monographs, collective works (whose content is systematically detailed) and theses as well as websites relating to the history of France from the fifth century to 1995.

Please note that this is a work in progress. The paper volumes (1953 to 2012) will be gradually added online.

You can browse by author, quoted person / organisation, subject, period and geographical location:

screenshot from BHF showing advanced search: quoted person/ organisation, author, language, subject, geographical location, period.This resource is now listed in Databases A-Z > History > Finding Critical Literature and will very shortly be in SOLO also.

While you are here:

Check out our guides to

Easter Vacation Loans 2023

As we enter the final week of Hilary Term, our Easter vacation borrowing begins today on standard loan items. Items can be taken out throughout the vacation with a due date of Monday 24th April in week one of Trinity Term. Loan limits will increase on Thursday 9th March to allow for 20 items to be taken out over this period and short loans can also be borrowed from Thursday as vacation loans. We hope you have a lovely break.

Women’s History Month 2023

To mark Women’s History Month, from 1st to 31st March, we have produced a display from our collections which focuses on first-hand accounts of women throughout history.

As well as physical books we also have a selection of e-books exploring the personal histories of women. The following texts are available online for Oxford University members to read remotely – just make sure you sign into SOLO with your ‘Single Sign On’ first. Click on the book cover below to access the SOLO record.

For more information about upcoming events in Oxford celebrating women click here.

New: Africa and the New Imperialism

Faded image of a black person superimposed over a manuscript excerpts and photo of a small steam boat.We are delighted to report that Oxford researchers now have access to Africa and the New Imperialism.

This Adam Matthew Digital resource documents the period of rapid colonial expansion by European powers across the African continent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many documents come from the Bodleian Libraries collections, esp. the Papers of Frederick Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger.

As well as digitised archives, diaries, logbooks, minutes, official records, petitions, reports, telegrams, and more, the resource has rich visual resources, such as maps, photographs, artwork, and film.

[From the Adam Matthew Digital: Nature and Scope]
From the accounts of missionaries and European explorers navigating the interior of the continent in the early nineteenth century; to the rise in European desire for increased power, empire and wealth culminating in the Berlin Conference 1885-1886; to the subsequent power struggles, negotiations and conflicts that raged across the continent at the turn of the twentieth century, the documents within Africa and the New Imperialism charts Africa’s encounters with European imperialist regimes and their impact on the lives of peoples across the continent.

Some collection highlights:

  • Diaries, journals and sketch books from key figures including David Livingstone, John Kirk and James Augustus Grant, whose sketchbooks from his Nile expedition are illustrated with watercolours of landscapes and peoples he encountered.
  • The journals of British soldier Major General Charles Gordon, which includes his final journal written before the fall of Khartoum to the Mahdist forces led by Muhammad Ahmad of Sudan.
  • Correspondence from Roger Casement and the resulting Casement Report which investigated, and confirmed, the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State under King Leopold II.
  • British Foreign Office files for the Berlin Conference, the event which ignited the spark of late-nineteenth century European imperialist efforts across Africa, including papers relating to European intervention in the Congo, the involvement of Belgium and Germany, and the Malet papers which include the private correspondence of Sir Edward Baldwin Malet who was the British Ambassador to the German court, 1884-1895.
  • The papers, photographs and correspondence of Frederick Lugard, a British soldier and administrator in Africa, covering British involvement in East Africa and West Africa from the 1870s to the early twentieth century. These are along with the papers of journalist and colonial commentator, Flora Shaw, Lugard’s wife.
  • Correspondence, journals and reports from French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza that provide insight into his expeditions to the Congo Basin; the establishment of the French Congo; de Brazza’s administration of the French Congo as Commissioner General; and de Brazza’s 1904 investigation into injustice, forced labour and brutality within the French Congo.
  • London Missionary Society correspondence from Central Africa and Matabeleland, including first-hand accounts of audiences with King Lobengula of the Ndebele people and the activities of the British South Africa Company controlled by Cecil Rhodes.
  • Imperialism
  • Slavery and forced labour
  • Diplomacy
  • Religion and missionaries
  • Race and ethnicity
  • War and violence
  • Resistance to colonialism
  • Technology and infrastructure

Each document within Africa and the New Imperialism has been tagged with a region. These regions have been designated in consultation with our editorial board, they are broad and are intended to provide support in browsing and navigating the documents presented within this resource. However, due to the nature of the material, many documents cover several regions and where this is the case, the most relevant regions have been added; there may be more regions covered by events within documents.

  • Central Africa
  • East Africa
  • Horn of Africa
  • North Africa
  • Southern Africa
  • West Africa
  • Rest of the World

Source libraries and archives

  • Archives nationales d’outre-mer
  • Bibliothèque nationale de France
  • Bodleian Library, University of Oxford
  • British Film Institute
  • British Library
  • National Library of Scotland
  • Sanford Museum, Florida
  • School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
  • Senate House Library, University of London
  • The National Archives, UK
  • University of Birmingham Library

A variety of research tools provide further contextual information or guidance for teaching and research. From Essays and Biographies to Guide to Regions and Places and Guide to the Archival Collections, explore the options under Research Tools or view the full list in Teaching Tools.

Also of interest:

Finding critical readings on colonial history:

Key source databases

See Databases A-Z for more and our LibGuides on African newspapers.

Oxford Festival of Open Scholarship 6–17 March 2023 – conference programme now live and bookings open

Logo of the Oxford Festival of Open Scholarship 2023What in the world is going on with open access and open research? Come along and hear from an array of national and international speakers – and find out. It’s a great opportunity to explore and debate issues, and jointly look for solutions.

The varied programm will be of interest to researchers, postgraduates and research support staff.

Organised by the Bodleian Libraries, OxFOS will cover a range of topical sessions online, including:

Sessions range between half hour talks and two-hour workshops. Some events are public, and some are restricted to University of Oxford staff and students.

To learn more about OA with a bit of fun, two in-person events are on offer: Open Access Escape Room and Play the ‘Publishing Trap’ board game.

Photo of the board game Publishing trap.Visit the OxFOS webpage for the schedule information and to book sessions.

We hope to interest and inspire you!

The Royal College of Physicians – Part I (Wiley Digital Archives)

Search screen of Wiley Digital Archive Royal College of Physician Part 1.Great news! Wiley is making the The Royal College of Physicians – Part I (Wiley Digital Archives) available to Jisc members in perpetuity as a gesture of thanks for participating in the Wiley transitional agreement in 2022. History of medicine researchers can now benefit from access to this resource.

The Royal College of Physicians – Part I (Wiley Digital Archives) will be of most interest to those studying history of Western medicine covering the 12th century to 1862. The archive is useful for researchers studying the history of anatomy, folk medicine, herbal medicine, healers and domestic medicine, medical law and policy, medical research (disease/treatment), medical and biological Illustration, and health education during the early modern and parts of the modern period.

The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) was founded so that physicians could be formally licensed to practise and those who were not qualified could be exposed and punished. There are many archive records defining the RCP’s changing role in setting standards in medical practice. RCP members have always collected manuscripts and papers on a wide range of medical and non-medical topics.

The Royal College of Physicians – Part I includes content from the 12th century to 1862, though some papers are dated later. Most of the collections are from British sources. A notable exception is the (Arthur Stanley) Tritton Oriental Manuscripts collection, which contains early Arabic medical manuscripts.

Important papers relate to William Harvey, Edward Jenner, John Latham, Thomas Lawrence, and other physicians. Papers will typically include notebooks containing medical extracts and observations, prescriptions, lecture notes, admissions tickets, diaries, correspondence, treatises, etc. Collections of 17th and 18th century polymaths may also include history of science material (e.g. John Dee on astronomy or mathematics).

The rest of Part I contains papers relating to the founding and running of the RCP itself and throw light on the history of the professionalisation of the medical profession. There are records relating to college officers & staff, education, examination, finance, events, legal status, estates records, trusts & bequests, membership, professional affairs, Regulation of Clinical Practice and Standards, and the college library.

Also of interest:

Trial until 31 March: State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782

Screenshot showing part of an 18th century manuscript from State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782. The blurb reads: "Behind the scenes in Georgian Britain. State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782 gives researchers and students unprecedented access to British government records during the Age of Enlightenment." We are re-trialling State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782 and invite students and researchers to give us feedback. The trial ends on 31 March. Please send any comments to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. While there is no funding for any of the four parts, your feedback is valuable in assessing priority purchases should funds become available.

What is State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782?

This resource extends Gale’s State Papers Online programme into the eighteenth century. Oxford researchers already have access to State Papers Online I – IV: The Tudors, Stuarts & Commonwealth 1509-1714 (Foreign & Domestic).

State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782 represents the final collection of the State Papers series from The National Archives before the series was closed and replaced by the Home Office and Foreign Office series in 1782. It covers the reigns of the Hanoverians George I (1714-1727), George II (1727-1760) and part of the reign of George III (up to 1782). The resource provides online access thousands of manuscripts relevant for the study of eighteenth century British government of internal and foreign affairs.

The documents provide evidence of the extent and nature of decisions taken by government and, more importantly, who was making those decisions. The records also illustrate the personal style of the secretaries of state who, with the chancellor of the Exchequer, controlled almost the entire life of the nation.

Researchers can examine the different ways in which the three Hanover monarchs conducted the business of monarchy and develop perspectives on the king’s changing role in political and administrative history.

Part I: State Papers Domestic, Military and Naval and the Registers of the Privy Council

This part includes documents on British internal political history during the reigns of the three Georges, including behind-the-scenes accounts of the turbulent events of George I’s reign (the Jacobite uprisings); the development of cabinet government; the ascension of George II and the consolidation of Whig supremacy; the riots surrounding libertarian politician John Wilkes; and the inept handling of the colonies that marred the early years of George III’s reign.

Along with the many internal and external threats to Hanoverian rule, users can also search and browse across a rich range of reports, petitions, and correspondence relating to the general administration and constitution of England; law and order; trade and shipping; and the founding of an empire abroad that extended to North America in the west and the Indian subcontinent in the east.

Part II: State Papers Foreign: Low Countries and Germany

The part documents the relationship of the Hanoverian reign with Flanders, Holland, and Germany, with particular focus on European powers such as the Holy Roman Empire and German states and towns. It also includes the Military Expedition series and the Archives of British Legations.

The papers include correspondence with English diplomats abroad and foreign diplomats in England, original and draft treaties, letters between heads of state, intercepted dispatches and other intelligence, working papers of the secretaries, and material relating to military, naval, and colonial policy.

Part III: State Papers Foreign: Western Europe

Papers in this part include documents relating to France, Dunkirk, Portugal, Spain, Malta, the Italian States and Rome, Genoa, Tuscany, Venice, Savoy and Sardinia, Sicily and Naples, as well as supplementary records of the Levant Company in Aleppo and the Aleppo consulate. It also includes the Royal Letters and Treaties series.

The majority of the papers are those written or received by the Secretaries of State for the Southern Department in the course of British diplomacy and intelligence gathering by British ambassadors and envoys abroad.

Part IV: State Papers Foreign: Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Turkey

The papers in this part includes the letters, memorials and treaties pertaining to Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Saxony, Prussia, Russia, Turkey and the Barbary States. It also includes papers sent to the British Secretaries of State from foreign ministers in England, as well as ‘confidential’ and intercepted letters between key figures in international politics.

Part IV covers nations and events at the borders of Europe and European power, from Russia emerging as an imperial force in the North as Sweden’s power declined after the Great Northern War (1700-1721), to piracy and conflict in the Mediterranean, wars and treaties with the Ottoman Empire at the outer reaches of Russia and Austria, and the constant building up of armies and fleets to bolster status and secure territories.

Also of interest:

Subscription resources are accessible to staff and students of Oxford University (use SSO for remote access) and Bodleian Library card holders (access in reading rooms).