Having trouble accessing government information? See the Libraries’ guide to Alternative Sources for Federal Information and Data.
HIST 398: Modern London; the Imperial Metropolis: Newspaper and primary source collections
Newspaper and periodical collections
- British PeriodicalsBritish Periodicals I and II includes the searchable full text and facsimile page images of 500 periodicals published between 1681 and 1921, a significant time not only for British history, but, given the growth and dominance of the British Empire for most of that period, world history. British Periodicals III extends the scope of British Periodicals by focusing on the first half of the twentieth century. All of this content is available in full page images with searchable full text.
- Gale NewsVaultAllows you to cross-search a variety of newspaper and periodical databases: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, British Newspapers, 1780 1950, Times (London) Digital Archive, Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive, Financial Times Historical Archive, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals, and Economist Historical Archive.
- Gale Primary Sources: British Library NewspapersA collection of national, regional, and local newspapers from Britain (1732-1950) and Ireland (1797-1950), sourced from the British Library.
- Guardian (1821-2003) and Observer (1791-2003) Historical NewspapersThe Guardian and The Observer are two major newspapers from the United Kingdom, and offer additional perspective to that of the Times of London.
- Nineteenth Century UK PeriodicalsAn online collection of British magazines, journals and specialty newspapers, 19th Century UK Periodicals provides an in-depth view of British life in the Romantic & Victorian age. Series I: New Readerships: Women's, Children's, Humor and Leisure/Sport. Series II: Empire: Travel and Anthropology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial.
- ProQuest Historical NewspapersSearch hundreds of thousands of pages of full-text and full-image newspaper articles. Includes news, editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, and birth and marriage announcements; historical photos, graphics, and advertisements are also included; display the complete image of any page in any issue or browse the database to scan individual issues page by page.
- Sunday Times (London) Digital ArchivePublished since 1822, a rich complement to the Times (London) Digital Archive.
- Times (London) Digital ArchiveDigital archive (1785-2019) of the British daily national newspaper, also know as The London Times and The Times of London. Please note that online coverage of The Times after the end date in this archive is available in several sources. Click here for more details.
Factiva and Nexis Uni
What is Factiva?
Factiva is an archive of over 32,000 major global newspapers, newswires, industry publications, magazines, reports and other sources. Although its focus is business news, it can be used to locate information on a variety of topics, including politics, current events, trends and government data.
- Search: Search the full text of 14,000 leading business newspapers, magazines, trade journals, newsletters, and television and radio transcripts, including:
- National, international and regional newspapers - (e.g. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Times, El Pais, The Financial Times, The Guardian)
- Magazines, journals and trade publications (e.g., Forbes, Newsweek, The Economist)
- Newswires (e.g., AFP, Reuters, Dow Jones)
- TV and radio podcasts (e.g., BBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC)
- News Pages: Browse the headlines, text and sections of major magazines and newspapers worldwide.
- Companies/Markets: Find company profiles, news articles and press releases, corporate financials, and current and historical equity stock quotes and market indices.
- NOTE: A small percentage of sources as well as the Alerts feature are not available to academic libraries.
- Rutgers is limited to 100 simultaneous users of this database.
What can you do with Factiva?
- Get stock quotes
- Track political news
- Find company profiles
- Locate country information
- Curate data for a SWOT analysis
- Read editorials from major news sources
- Obtain industry-specific data from trade publications
- Access full text articles from The Wall Street Journal & The New York Times
What is Nexis Uni?
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic) features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources with an interface that offers quick discovery across all content types, personalization features such as Alerts and saved searches and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents.
Government information
- House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
Working documents of the British government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy, showing how issues were explored and legislation was formed. With all collections available, HCPP includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. HCPP delivers page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with detailed indexing.
Primary Source Collections
- Empire Online
Covers 500 years of the rise and fall of empires, this features a wide variety of material, including exploration journals & logs; correspondence; periodicals; diaries; government papers; missionary papers; travel writing; slave papers; memoirs; fiction; children's adventure stories; folk tales; exhibition catalogs; maps; marketing posters; photographs; and illustrations, with many in color.
- London Low LifePrimary sources on the social history of 19th century London, sourced from Lilly Library, Indiana University.
- Making of the Modern World (Parts I, II)Part I presents more than 66,000 titles from the period 1450-1914 and is the most comprehensive collection in existence for the study of early economic, political, business and social history and for researching the literature of economics from this period. The collection contains books, serials, pamphlets, government publications and more.
Part II provides a glimpse into the second half of the 19th century and the global events and crises that occurred. Topics covered by this collection include: banking history, economic disaster and recovery, socialism and social movements, war and the military, law and government and industry and trade. - Mass Observation OnlineArchive of Mass Observation, the pioneering social research organization that studied the everyday lives of ordinary people in Britain from 1937 to 1950s. Archive includes materials collected by investigators (thematic studies through raw data, surveys, and covert observation) and materials submitted by volunteers (diaries and other personal writing).
- Mass Observation Project
The Mass Observation Project, coordinated by the University of Sussex since 1981, is a national life writing project about everyday life in Britain that captures the experiences, thoughts and opinions of everyday people, and serves as one of the major repositories of longitudinal qualitative social data in the UK.
- Migration to New WorldsPrimary sources documenting the movement of peoples from Great Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and Asia to the New World and Australasia, concentrating on the 19th and 20th centuries, and dealing with immigration, refugees, labor migration, immigration politics, religious, ethnic and community relations, and responses to emigration from local and indigenous communities. Includes personal accounts, oral histories, correspondence, printed books, pamphlets, leaflets, reports, shipping papers, logbooks and plans, photographs, maps, and ephemera.
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online
A large, deep, and rich collection of primary sources documenting the 'long 19th Century.' Materials include books, newspapers, periodicals, diaries, photographs, pamphlets, maps, and more. See "About" within the database for fuller description. Also searchable from within: Gale Artemis: Primary Sources.
- Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975Primary sources on social protest, student activism, counterculture, and women's liberation against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam conflict and the growth of the consumer society.
- Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945
Consists of historical documents from the British National Archives that offer perspectives on politics, diplomacy and every day life in the German-occupied countries.
- Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950
Collection of primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European people in the aftermath of World War II.
Mass Observation Online
Political and historical topics:
- World War II (1939-1945)
- The everyday experiences of British citizens during the war, including air raids, rationing, and the impact on daily life.
- Post-War Reconstruction (1945-1950s)
- The archive includes observations on the rebuilding of Britain after the war, the introduction of the welfare state, and changes in social attitudes.
- The Festival of Britain (1951)
- This event aimed to promote British science, technology, and industrial design, and Mass Observation recorded public reactions and experiences.
- The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (1953)
- The archive contains detailed accounts of public celebrations and personal reflections on the coronation.
- The Swinging Sixties (1960s)
- Although the original project ended in the 1950s, the archive includes later observations that capture the cultural shifts of the 1960s, including changes in fashion, music, and social norms.
Personal topics:
- Personal Appearance and Clothes
- Observations and diaries often include reflections on fashion, personal grooming, and the social significance of clothing choices.
- Shopping and Consumer Behavior
- Diaries and surveys document people’s shopping habits, preferences, and the impact of rationing during wartime.
- Health and Well-being
- Personal accounts of health issues, medical treatments, and the impact of public health campaigns are common.
- Family and Relationships
- Observers often wrote about their family dynamics, relationships, and domestic life.
- Work and Employment
- Experiences related to job satisfaction, workplace conditions, and the impact of economic changes on employment.
- Housing and Living Conditions
- Diaries include descriptions of housing conditions, neighborhood, and issues related to housing shortages.
Mass Observation Project
Political and historical topics in the 1980's:
- The wedding of Charles and Diana
- The troubles in Northern Ireland
- The Aids crisis
- The Falklands war
Personal topics in the 1980's:
- Attitudes to Christmas
- Attitudes to America
- Attitudes to money
Political and historical topics in the 1990's:
- The Gulf crisis
- The divorce of Charles and Diana and the death of Diana
- Current events in Ireland and Somalia
Personal topics in the 1990's:
- Social divisions
- Technology
- Attitudes to aging
- Attitudes to risk taking
Mass-Observation by
This book reproduces the original 1937 founding pamphlet of Mass-Observation - the compelling social research project that ran for decades in the mid-20th century - with expert commentary throughout. It also features brand new supporting essays by and informative interviews with prominent scholars of Mass-Observation which reflect on the organisation, its origins and its influence on multiple academic disciplines, including history, sociology and anthropology. An introductory essay by the editor synthesizes the arguments of this material, as well as contributing vital historical context and suggestions for ways in which other disciplines might benefit from the use of Mass-Observation approaches and archival material. There is also a chronology of Mass-Observation, its publications and major figures associated with it. Mass-Observation offers an unparalleled wealth of insights into the lived experiences of Britons in the 20th century and this volume provides the best introduction to it available, familiarizing you with both the original Mass-Observation aims and what value this fascinating material carries for us today.
ISBN: 9781350226463Publication Date: 2023-02-09
Seven Lives from Mass Observation by
What was it like to live in Britain during the second half of the twentieth century? In a successor to his acclaimed Nine Wartime Lives: Mass Observation and the Making of the Modern Self, James Hinton uses autobiographical writing contributed to Mass Observation up to 1981 to explore the social and cultural history of late twentieth-century Britain. Prompted by thrice-yearly open-ended questionnaires, Mass Observation's volunteers wrote about their political attitudes, religious beliefs, work, childhoods, education, friendships, marriages, sex lives, mid-life crises, aging - the whole range of human emotion, feeling, attitudes, and experience. At the core of the book are seven "biographical essays": intimate portraits of individual lives set in the context of the shift towards the more tolerant and permissive society of the 1960s to the rise of Thatcherite neo-liberalism as the structures of Britain's post-war settlement crumbled from the later 1970s. The mass observers featured in the book, four women and three men, are drawn from across the social spectrum - wife of a small businessman, teacher, social worker, RAF wife, mechanic, lorry driver, City banker: all active and forceful characters with strong opinions and lives crowded with struggle and drama. The honesty and frankness with which they wrote about themselves takes us below the surface of public life to the efforts of "ordinary", but exceptionally articulate and self-reflective, people to make sense of their lives in rapidly changing times.
ISBN: 9780198787136Publication Date: 2016-12-06
