Digital Resources
We support a range of digital resources for arts and humanities researchers in the UK and internationally.
More resources
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Research Portal
A searchable directory of Latin American Studies research resources in the UK.
The Caribbean Studies Collection
The Caribbean studies collections at the University of London libraries are some of the largest and most varied in the UK. This guide offers a concise introduction to the collections.
The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil
The Legal Cultures of the Subsoil database is a repository of legal actions and legal instruments employed by different actors in the context of mining conflicts in Central America.
Being Human (School of Advanced Study)
Commonwealth Opinion (Institute of Commonwealth Studies)
Commonwealth Oral Histories (Institute of Commonwealth Studies)
Digital History Seminar (Institute of Historical Research)
Extreme Energy Initiative (Human Rights Consortium)
The IHR Blog (Institute of Historical Research)
Talking Humanities (School of Advanced Study)
EpiDoc Guidelines: Ancient Documents in TEI XML
EpiDoc is an international, collaborative effort that provides guidelines and tools for encoding scholarly and educational editions of ancient documents.
SNAP: Standards for Networking Ancient Prosopographies
SNAP is building a virtual authority list for ancient people through linked data collection of common information from many collaborating projects.
InScribe: palaeography learning materials
The UK’s first – and freely available to all – online modular training course on palaeography and manuscript studies. It provides a set of distance learning materials suitable both for someone interested in exploring palaeography for the first time as well as for those in need of a refresher course.
A PORT for Modern Languages
A training reference point for all postgraduates, especially those in modern languages. As well as online research skills tutorials, PORT is a portal to research resources including catalogues, archives, museums, institutes, virtual libraries, and links.
1807 Commemorated: the Abolition of the Slave Trade
A website engaging with the ways in which the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade was commemorated in Britain and the public memories which have been shaped by it.
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH)
Over 470,000 records describing books and articles about British and Irish history. Replaced the RHS Bibliography on 1 January 2010.
Fully searchable digital library for the history of Britain.
Catalogue of British Town Maps
The catalogue locates town maps extant in UK public archives and libraries. It provides details of almost 8,000 maps and provides for each the key cartographical and other features and the location of publicly-accessible exemplars.
Catalogue of Historical Parliamentary Records, 1924-74
Links recordings and proceedings in the UK Parliament and in the Northern Ireland Parliament (Stormont Parliament) which existed between 1924 and 1974.
Connected Histories: Sources for Building British History, 1500-1900
Connecting the major online resources for the history of Britain, 1500-1900 – people, places and dates.
New editions and translations of English legal codes, edicts, and treatises produced up to the time of Magna Carta 1215 in print and online.
Fashion and Consumption in the First World War
An online exhibition of digitised department store catalogues, 1916-17.
A digital resource providing insight not only into the major curricular changes in history over the previous century, but the changing experience of history at the chalk face in English state schools.
Comprehensive account of parliamentary politics in England, then Britain, from their origins in the thirteenth century.
Information resources for the teaching and learning of history.
An open access journal publishing reviews and reappraisals of significant work in all fields of historical interest.
An online exhibition of political pamphlets from the Ron Heisler collection of political and protest literature in Senate House Library.
Digital archive of Ruth First's notes and writings.
SHINE: an Archive of the UK Web, 1996-2013
An interface providing access to the full-text index of UK web space from 1996 to 2013, developed in partnership with the British Library as part of the Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities project.
Free access to reliable local history materials, produced by academics and volunteers.
Online catalogue of the Warburg Institute Archive (WIA).
The Warburg Institute Iconographic Database
Digitised images from the Institute's Photographic Collection and Library.
BAILII British and Irish Legal Information Institute
BAILII, based at IALS, is a sophisticated searchable database of online primary legal resources, updated daily. BAILII contains British and Irish case law & legislation, European Union case law, Law Commission reports, and other law-related British and Irish material.
CaLIM Current Awareness for Legal Information Managers
A searchable database of current awareness information giving bibliographic details of newly published books and journal articles of specific interest to law library and legal information professionals.
Eagle-i Internet Portal for Law Project
Electronic Access to Global Legal information, the successor to the award-winning national Intute and SOSIG law gateways, provides description and evaluation of selected high quality and authentic legal information sources on the web.
An award-winning database forming a collaborative internet gateway to holdings of foreign, comparative and international law in UK national and university libraries, locating and describing the collections in libraries throughout the UK.
A database of basic information on over 2,000 of the most significant multilateral treaties concluded from 1353 onwards and a number of significant bilateral treaties signed between 1353 and 1815, with links to full-text where available.
IALS Journals in SAS Open Journals
Past issues of Amicus Curiae – the official journal of both the Society for Advanced Legal Studies and the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies – are freely available online. This open journal version of Amicus Curiae includes over 600 articles by more than 400 authors. Many of the articles are appearing online for the first time.
Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review
Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review brings articles, legal developments and case reports to academics, practitioners and the industry in relation to digital evidence and electronic signatures from across the world. An open access version of the journal has been developed by Stephen Mason (founder, publisher and general editor) with the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies.
The IALS Student Law Review (ISLRev) is a digital open access peer-reviewed law journal established by the Institute on the School of Advanced Study's Open Journals System. It is run by IALS PhD legal research students assisted by an academic member of staff at IALS. The journal is intended as a showcase for legal scholars from postgraduate students and early career scholars to well-established academics; and, intends to target both members of the legal academia and practitioners in addition to students.
The School has compiled a lists of publications and other resources which are openly accessible to humanities researchers. Some of these, like the Programming Historian, the Open Library of Humanities or the books published by our own University of London Press, have always been open access; others have been made newly open to researchers for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lists below have been compiled by subject specialists in Classics, History, Law, Modern Languages and Renaissance studies, Latin America and will be updated on an ongoing basis:
- Classics (Institute of Classical Studies)
- History (Institute of Historical Research)
- Law (Institute of Advanced Legal Studies)
- Modern Languages (Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies)
- Renaissance studies and the history of the classical tradition (The Warburg Institute)
The University of London’s Senate House Library has a more general list of open access databases, with an emphasis on the humanities.
JISC has compiled a list of publishers and content providers who are temporarily widening access to their resources (either wholly or in part).
The Public Books Database provides a useful guide to the hundreds of books which have been made open access by university presses, primarily, although not exclusively, in the US.