So normally I’m mostly interested in American history, BUT I’m currently taking a (fantastic) course in the military and social climate in Britain from the Crimean War until WWII, and just had a few sources pointed out today by my TA, one of which is:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/hansard/commons/
(*you’ll want to click ‘Historic Hansard’ at the lower right of the screen*)
The House of Commons historical database. You can search by topic, by speaker, by year, by month, and they have material going back to the 18th century. It’s all there - debates transcribed word for word. It is quite literally a treasure trove of information. If I didn’t have a million papers due, I would quite honestly spend months just cruising around the archives learning stuff.
Another really cool thing, which, admittedly, is kind of specific to my campus library, is that we have an index of the London Times newspaper, going back into the 1800s. I’m writing a paper on WWI, and this is such a helpful resource. Basically, you look up a keyword in the book (say, WAR, for example.) It will have hundreds of pages on WAR, with subheadings like EUROPE, and then further specification like ARMY>SOLDIERS>DISABILITIES>PENSIONS>WIDOWS AND ORPHANS FUND.
I was looking at 1917 from January to March, and spent over an hour on those three months alone, and got over two pages worth of citations, which can then be plugged into the online database and downloaded as PDFs.
If your local or campus library doesn’t have a Times index, the chances are they still have loads of other ones - we also had the Canadian Law index, and treaties, and French equivalents thereof, and the Library of Congress index, and Foreign Policy, and all kinds of good stuff. And the best part is there usually isn’t a big line of people waiting to read them, because everyone tries to do it online - the difference being that the books are so well-organized they save you a ton of time once you know how to use them.
Anyway, I figured I’d share this with you all, in case it sparks any interest.
Cheers!
you’ll have to bear with another day of blog-related failure, thanks to college. T_T
Nevertheless, here’s something to entertain yourselves with. If you haven’t already, I suggest you check out some of the following blogs:
http://forties-fifties-sixties-love.tumblr.com/
http://hollyhocksandtulips.tumblr.com/
http://theniftyfifties.tumblr.com/
You won’t be dissappointed! :)
