Arts and Humanities electronic databases - subject index: H-M
The electronic resources listed here are available in the Humanities and Rare Books and Music Reading Rooms (and in some cases also in other Reading Rooms) of the British Library.
For licensing reasons, the links to most of the electronic databases listed below will only work from within British Library Reading Rooms.
If you do not find the resource you are looking for, see the Library's complete listing of electronic resources in the British Library London Reading Rooms.
 Online resources |
 CD-ROMs |
Hispanic studies
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| Bibliografía de la Literatura Española desde 1980 - | A resource for scholars of Spanish literature comprising a comprehensive bibliography of all related documentation published in any language. 1980-. | |
| Chicano Database | Identifies, in one place, all types of material about Chicanos and provides uniform subject access. Incorporates the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Database, a comprehensive resource covering psychological, sociological, and educational literature. Also includes (1992 to the present) the broader Latino experience of Puerto Ricans, Cuban Americans, and Central American immigrants. Coverage is mainly from the 1960s to the present, with selective coverage back to the early 1900s. | |
| Handbook of Latin American Studies | A bibliography evaluating books, book chapters, articles, and conference proceedings published worldwide in the field of Latin American studies. Produced by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the online records correspond to the printed Handbook of Latin American Studies. The database is multilingual and multidisciplinary, covering the fields of anthropology -- including archaeology and genealogy; art; economics; electronic resources; geography; government and politics; international relations; literature; music; philosophy; and sociology. | |
| HAPI Online | Online version of the Hispanic American Periodicals Index. Indexes more than 500 key social science and humanities journals containing information about Central and South America, Mexico, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States. Coverage dates from 1970 onwards and includes articles, book reviews and original literary works. Many of the citations are linked to full text. | |
| Spanish Bibliography 15th Century - | Lists over 1 million items in Spanish from the collections of over 200 leading North American libraries. The bibliography includes titles from classical and modern literature, scholarly publications, conference proceedings, legal publications, reference books, and periodicals. | |
History
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Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| Akten des Kaiserlichen Reichshofrats 1486 to 1766 | An
online edition of the documents of the Reichshofrat ('Aulic Council')
of the Holy Roman Empire. NB: Content and interface are in German only. Please ask at reference enquiries for login details. |
|
| America: History and Life | Historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Article abstracts and bibliographical citations of books and dissertations. Indexing, which originally covered publications from 1964 onwards, is being extended retrospectively to the late 19th century. Click here to search America: History and Life alongside Historical Abstracts. | |
| Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature | Provides selective and critical analysis of new historical books, journals and journal articles. Full text coverage extends from 1997 to 2010. | |
| Bibliography of British and Irish History | Provides bibliographic data on historical writing dealing with the British Isles, and with the British Empire and Commonwealth, from 55 B.C. to the present. Successor to the Royal Historical Society Bibliography. | |
| British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries | Includes more than 100,000 pages of primary materials spanning more than 300 years, from the 16th century onwards; also includes biographical information and a bibliography of sources. | |
| British History Online | British History Online is the digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Created by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust. Key content includes: the Victoria County History of the Counties of England, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae, English Heritage's Survey of London, Office Holders in Modern Britain, historic maps from the Ordnance Survey and multiple series of the Calendars of State Papers. | |
| British Online Archives | Digitised papers and finding aids from more than 25 collections. Subjects include British industrial, scientific, social, political and ecclesiastical history. There are also collections relating to the slave trade and Britain's colonial history. | |
| British records on the Atlantic World, 1700- 1900 | Included as part of British Online Archives, this 11 part series documents the colonial, missionary and commercial history of British activities in the Atlantic and Caribbean. Many of the collections provide original documents on Britain's role in the slave trade. | |
| The British Union of Fascists: newspapers and secret files | Publications from the BUF, newspaper reports, and declassified Home Office and Security Service files on Sir Oswald Mosley and other members of the BUF. The collection mainly documents the imprisonment of Mosley, and government investigations into leading British fascists during the Second World War. | |
| The Cecil Papers | The Cecil Papers are a privately held archive, consisting principally of the correspondence of William Cecil, Lord Burghley (1520-1598) and his son, Robert, the 1st Earl of Salisbury (1563-1612). These two men dominated the administration of government during the reign of Elizabeth I. The database offers full-colour images digitised directly from the original Cecil Papers manuscripts at Hatfield House Archives and a digitised version of the Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Marquess of Salisbury. | |
| Communist Party of Great Britain archives | The archive includes records from the Executive Committee, National Congresses, the Industrial Department. The collection also has the papers of General Secretaries Harry Pollitt and John Gollan. | |
| Credo Reference (formerly Xreferplus) | Credo Reference (formerly Xreferplus) is an online reference library that provides access to a large number of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and other reference books. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology. | |
| Dissertations read to the Royal Medical Society, Edinburgh | Over 200 volumes of hand-written dissertations, presented between 1751 and 1899. The dissertations provide a rich source for the history of medical education and of the development of medical science. | |
| Ecclesiastical, court and land records in the Manchester Cathedral Archives | Digitised parish registers, records of charitable activity, estate records and manor court books, covering the 18th and 19th centuries. These document land use and population change in Manchester during the Industrial Revolution. | |
| Empire Online | Full digital facsimiles of printed and manuscript materials relevant to the history of the British Empire. The project is being published in five sections between 2003 and 2007 offering c60,000 images of original documents linked to essays by leading scholars in the field. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969 (2003); Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire (2003/4); The Visible Empire (2004/5); Religion and Empire (2005/6); and Race, Class and Colonialism, c1783-1969 (2006/7). | |
| Ephraim Deinard | The Hebrew publications of Ephraim Deinard comprise a trove of historical and bibliographic material relating to Russian, Palestinian, and American Jewish history, Crimean and Karaite studies, anti-Hasidic polemic, modern Hebrew literature, and antiquarian Hebrew booklore. Scattered in libraries around the world, these works – some of which are excessively rare – are all made accessible in this unique collection. | |
| European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750 | Bibliographic database based on European Americana : a chronological guide to works printed in Europe relating to the Americas, 1493-1750. Over 32,000 entries, covering the history of European exploration and portrayals of native American peoples. | |
| La France pendant la guerre 1939-1945: Resistance et journaux de Vichy (Voices from Wartime France 1939-1945: Clandestine Resistance and Vichy) | La France pendant la guerre 1939-1945: Resistance et journaux de Vichy (Voices from Wartime France 1939-1945: Clandestine Resistance and Vichy): Providing perspectives from both the Vichy government and the resistance movement, this unique collection constitutes the sum of the French press that actually reached Britain during the Occupation of 1940-44. It is the record of what was known by the British about the hearts and minds of the French people at the most dramatic period of their shared history. | |
| Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange | Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange provides a vast range of visual, manuscript and printed materials sourced from over twenty key libraries and more than a dozen companies and trade organisations around the world. | |
| The Grand Tour | Accounts of the English abroad, c1550-1850, highlighting the influence of continental travel on British art, architecture, urban planning, literature & philosophy. Includes written accounts & visual representations of street life. | |
| Historical Abstracts | Historical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada). Article abstracts and bibliographical citations of books and dissertations. Indexing, which originally covered publications from 1954 onwards, is being extended retrospectively to the late 19th century. Click here to search Historical Abstracts alongside America: History and Life. | |
| History of Parliament | The history of parliament from 1386-1820. Includes illustrations, essays, and biographical entries for members of parliament. | |
| History of Science, Technology and Medicine | The International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science's database integrates four separately created bibliographies and describes journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews, and dissertations in all scientific disciplines and related fields. Coverage relates to publications from 1975 to the present. | |
| The Indian papers of Colonel Clive and Brigadier-General Carnac, 1752-1774 | The correspondence provides an insight into contemporary European and Indian views on political and military events surrounding the establishment of Britain's Indian empire in the mid-18th century. | |
| International Medieval Bibliography | A bibliography of published literature relating to the European Middle Ages (c450-1500). Besides monographs, the work indexes over 4,000 periodicals published in Europe, the Americas and the Pacific. 1967- | |
| Iter Bibliography | Covers all literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for journal articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies are included. Also included are citations for monographs, and material published in monographs and collections of essays. | |
| Journaux de la Revolution de 1848 (Newspapers of the French Revolution 1848) | Journaux de la Revolution de 1848 (Newspapers of the French Revolution 1848): The revolution of 1848 caused the final collapse of monarchy in France, and in the power vacuum that followed a range of competing voices sought to control the future direction of the country. The social and political upheavals of this period are richly detailed in this unique collection of newspapers and periodicals - an essential resource for understanding modern European history. | |
| Keesing's online | Digest of political, social and economic events for all countries of the world from 1931. | |
| London Low Life | London Low Life is a full-text searchable resource, containing colour digital images of rare books, ephemera, maps and other materials relating to 18th, 19th and early 20th century London. | |
| Mass Observation Online | Surveys,
interview notes, diaries, reports and photographs that describe
in detail aspects of British life in the 1940s and 1950s. Topics
covered include attitudes to war, the role of the United Nations,
youth crime, radio listening, famous people, and household budgeting. |
|
| North American Women's Letters and Diaries | Includes more than 150,000 pages of primary materials spanning more than 300 years, from Colonial times to 1950; also includes biographies and a bibliography of sources. | |
| Oxford Reference Online (Premium Collection) | Over 100 specialist and general reference dictionaries covering a wide range of subjects. Includes the Dictionary of British history, the Dictionary of world history and a number of other works. | |
| Parliament Rolls of Medieval England | The rolls of parliament were the official records of the meetings of the English parliament from the reign of Edward I (1272 - 1307) until the reign of Henry VII (1485 - 1509), after which they were superseded by the journals of the Lords and, somewhat later, of the Commons. The rolls, which amount in total to over four million words, were first edited in the eighteenth century and published in 1783 in six folio volumes entitled Rotuli Parliamentorum (RP) under the general editorship of the Reverend John Strachey. This new edition reproduces the rolls edited in RP in their entirety, plus those subsequently published by Cole, Maitland, and Richardson and Sayles as well as a substantial amount of material never previously published, together with a full translation of all the texts from the three languages used by the medieval clerks (Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English). It also includes an introduction to every parliament known to have been held by an English king (or in his name) between 1275 and 1504, whether or not the roll for that parliament survives. Where appropriate, appendices of supplementary material are also provided, including information about the parliament in question derived from sources other than the roll. Much of this supplementary material consists of petitions to parliament. | |
| Parliamentary Labour Party papers, 1968/69-1993/94 | Minutes of Parliamentary party and Shadow Cabinet meetings, covering the period from the end of the Wilson government to the death of John Smith, and events just before the election of Tony Blair as party leader. | |
| Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 | Digital facsimiles of printed and manuscript materials relevant to trans-Atlantic slavery and abolition. Materials relating to slavery today, desegregation and social justice are included. The facsimile documents are presented alongside contextual essays contributed by leading academics in the field. | |
| State Papers Online. Part I: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Domestic | A collection
of English government documents originating from the sixteenth century
– when the King or Queen acted as Prime Minister as well as
Monarch. The papers feature the office archives and correspondence
of the secretaries of state serving the Monarch as facsimile manuscript
documents accessed directly or via the fully searchable Calendar
entries (abstracts or transcriptions). This collection contains
information on every facet of English government, including social
and economic affairs, law and order, religious policy, crown possessions
and intelligence gathering. Offers the ability to cross search the
Calendars and access the documents directly from their individual
Calendar entries. By overcoming the difficulty of matching an individual
Calendar entry to the original facsimile document, State Papers
Online, 1509–1714 marks a huge advance for historians in all
disciplines, both as a research tool and as a teaching resource. |
|
| State Papers Online. Part II, The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Foreign | The office archives & correspondence of secretaries of state relating to foreign affairs from 1509-1714 as facsimile manuscript documents accessed directly or via the fully searchable Calendar entries (abstracts or transcriptions). | |
Islamic studies
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| Encyclopaedia of Islam | The
online Encyclopaedia of Islam incorporates the entire text of
volumes I to XI and Supplement (Volume XII) of the printed edition
of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Additional search facilities
and the Supplement enable the user to efficiently search and
combine data from a vast corpus of over 12,000 printed pages. |
|
| Index Islamicus | Index Islamicus is the international classified bibliography of publications in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world. The publications recorded are (journal) articles, books and reviews. All essays and papers contained in multi-author volumes are recorded, classified and indexed separately. About 2500 periodicals are surveyed, including general history, social science, history of science and arts titles as well as specialist area- and subject-based ones. Some relevant articles and reviews published electronically are also recorded. | |
Italian studies
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| Bibliografia Nazionale Italiana | Contains descriptions of over 450,000 publications written or produced in Italy from 1958 to the present and deposited under copyright at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. Records contain shelfmarks for the B.N.C. di Firenze. | |
| Italian Academies | The
Italian Academies themed collection provides a detailed searchable
database for locating printed material relating to the Italian
learned Academies active in Bologna, Naples, Padua and Siena
in the period 1530-1650 and now held in the collections of the
British Library. |
|
| Italian Bibliography 15th Century - | Lists over 600,000 items in Italian from the collections of over 200 leading North American libraries. The bibliography includes titles from classical and modern literature, scholarly publications, conference proceedings, legal publications, reference books, and periodicals. | |
Jewish studies
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| Bibliography of the Hebrew Book | Comprehensive interactive bibliography of all books printed in the Hebrew Language between 1473 and 1960. It includes over 100,000 titles and 12,000 authors. | |
| Ephraim Deinard | The Hebrew publications of Ephraim Deinard comprise a trove of historical and bibliographic material relating to Russian, Palestinian, and American Jewish history, Crimean and Karaite studies, anti-Hasidic polemic, modern Hebrew literature, and antiquarian Hebrew booklore. Scattered in libraries around the world, these works – some of which are excessively rare – are all made accessible in this unique collection. | |
| Index to Jewish Periodicals | A comprehensive index of references to articles, book reviews, essays, feature stories, and letters in English, published in more than 180 periodicals devoted to Jewish concerns. Most titles indexed are not found in the standard periodical literature guides. |
|
Language and linguistics
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts | Covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics, and also various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics. 1973- | |
| MLA International Bibliography | MLA provides bibliographic information on published scholarly documents in a range of subjects including literature, modern languages, linguistics, folklore. 1926-. | |
| Oxford Reference Online (Premium Collection) | Over 100 specialist and general reference dictionaries covering a wide range of subjects from social sciences, business, sciences, language, the arts, and history. | |
Librarianship and information science
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| ALISA (Australian Library & Information Science Abstracts) | A bibliographic database that indexes and abstracts articles from published and unpublished material from 1982 onwards, ALISA aims to cover comprehensively all current Australian literature on library and information services including the library workforce, education and training, information technology, networking, electronic publishing, telecommunications, records relating to Australian children's literature, and archives. | |
| Libraries Directory | Detailed information on national, university, special, and public libraries, and archives and record offices in the UK and Ireland. Information on contacts, departments, special collections, electronic resources and general information is given. | |
| Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts | Indexes
more than 600 periodicals, plus books, research reports and proceedings.
Includes librarianship, classification, cataloging, bibliometrics,
online information retrieval, information management. Coverage extends
back to the mid-1960s. |
|
|
Indexes articles and book reviews in key library and information science periodicals published in the United States and elsewhere from 1984. Full text coverage for selected periodicals is also included from 1994. Books, chapters in collected works such as conference proceedings, library school theses, and pamphlets are also indexed. This database can be searched in combination with Library Literature and Information Science Retrospective, which covers the period 1905-1983. |
|
|
| Library Literature and Information Science Retrospective 1905-1983 | Indexes articles and book reviews published in key library and information science periodicals between 1905 and 1983. Coverage also includes full text content from 69 years of the Wilson Library Bulletin and indexing from Library Work (1905-1911). Books, book chapters and library school theses are also indexed. This database can be searched in combination with Library Literature and Information Science Full Text, which covers the period from 1984 onwards." | |
| LISA | Abstracts over 440 periodicals from more than 68 countries and in more than 20 different languages on the subject of librarianship and information science. Coverage from 1969. | |
| World of learning | Information on over 30,000 universities, colleges, schools of art and music, libraries, learned societies, museums and art galleries, research institutes and international cultural, scientific and educational organizations, together with details of more than 200,000 staff and officials. | |
Music and recorded sound
|
Title
|
Brief description
|
Format
|
|---|---|---|
| BBC handbooks, annual reports and accounts, 1927-2001/2 | All the handbooks, annual reports and accounts published by the British Broadcasting Corporation during the 20th century. Includes reviews of each year's public-service broadcasting, with detailed schedules, audience research, performance and objective tables. | |
| BBC Listener Research Department, 1937-c.1950 | Reports from the early years of the Research Department up to the launch of Britain's first national television channel. The reports cover reactions to specific programmes, and also broader surveys of attitudes to current events and social and cultural activity. | |
| CPM Plus | The catalogue of printed music in the British Library. | |
| Credo Reference (formerly Xreferplus) | Credo Reference (formerly Xreferplus) is an online reference library that provides access to a large number of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri and other reference books. Subjects covered include art, biography, history, literature, music, religion, and science and technology. | |
| Dance in Video | To contain 250 dance productions and
documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of
the 20th century. Includes ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental,
and improvisational dance. This release includes 150 videos (201
hours). NB: For sound to these videos use the SoundServer terminals in the Humanities 2 Reading Room. |
|
| Ethnographic Video Online (Vols. 1 & 2) |
Over 1500 ethnographic films fully digitised and semantically indexed with additional field notes and related articles, and synchronised, searchable transcripts running alongside each video. This worldwide collection charts the development of visual ethnographic documentation as well as the beginnings of documentary, including historic footage and contemporary material from renowned filmmakers and working anthropologists. It supports a wide range of disciplines (including anthropology, psychology, music, moving image, film studies, arts, human geography, economics, international and regional studies) and is a unique resource for researchers, programme makers and those interested in sound and moving image as a research medium. | |
| Grove Music Online | The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians online. Includes The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. | |
| Index to Printed Music: Collections & Series | A
database for finding individual pieces of music published in standard
scholarly editions, such as 'Collected works'. The music included
is published in sets and series and organized according to various
criteria, e.g. by composer, by geographical area, or by time or
style period. |
|
| International Bibliography of Printed Music, Music Manuscripts and Recordings | An international register of music manuscripts, printed music, and recordings. Covers from the 15th Century to the end of the 20th Century. No limits on musical forms have been applied. Over 1.3 million records. | |
| International Who's Who in Classical Music | Details from this publication, which contains biographical information on classical musicians worldwide, are included in World Who's Who. | |
| International Who's Who in Popular Music | Details from this publication, which contains biographical information on key personalities in the popular music industry, are included in World Who's Who. | |
| The Music Index Online | Published
since 1949, The Music Index: A Subject-Author Guide to Music Periodical
Literature is compiled from over 670 international music periodicals
offering the researcher access to a wealth of historiographic, ethnographic,
and musicological data. Covers 1976-2006. (NB: Click Reload button if "Data missing" screen appears on reading room terminals.) |
|
| Naxos Music Library (NML) | Naxos Music Library (NML) offers not only practically
all standard repertoire, but also an enormous range of specialist
repertoire not available from other online sources. The recordings
in Naxos Music Library include the complete catalogues of BIS, Chandos,
CPO, Hänssler, Hungaroton, Marco Polo, Naxos and selected titles
of other leading independent labels, with more labels being added
from time to time. NB: Only available on the SoundServer terminals in the Humanities 2 Reading Room. |
|
| RILM Abstracts of Music Literature | A bibliography of world music, including Eastern and Western classical music, pop and folk music. Date coverage: 1969 to the present. | |
| RIPM | Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals (1800-1950). | |
| RISM | The International Inventory Of Musical Sources. | |
| SearchMuze | Accesses well over 615,000 available and deleted recordings held on the Muze MusicMaster, Video, Soundtracks and Spoken Word Databases. | |
| Theatre in Video | Contains
more than 100 definitive performances of the world's leading plays,
and more than 60 film documentaries, online in streaming video (250
hours+). This release contains 162 titles, representing many leading
playwrights, actors and directors. NB: For sound to these videos use the SoundServer terminals in the Humanities 2 Reading Room. |
|