Guiding students to high quality research websites rather leaving them to roam aimlessly around the world wide web via Google search can be a challenge. Getting students to recommend sites to each other may be one way of keeping them all on task – and on the right track! Here’s an example of the list Kimberley Athawes, Katrina Murray and Katy Pickersgill compiled for the Prison Voices website & second year undergraduate module at Liverpool John Moores University.

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Starting research for any piece of academic work is a daunting prospect. The same question pops up over and over: ‘where do I even begin?’ Well, below are a list of some websites that we have found useful. It’s not so hard once you know where to look!

 

http://www.prisonvoices.org/– Created by English students at Liverpool John Moore’s University, Prison Voices explores Crime, Conviction and Confession from 1700-1900.

 http://www.writinglives.org/  – Created by English students at Liverpool John Moore’s University, Writing Lives is a collaborative research project on working-class autobiographies.

http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/ – A  library of more than 500 criminal broadsides that were sold to audiences who gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain.

http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ – Partnered with the British library and brightsolid online they continue to publish pages from British newspapers, scanning back to the 1800’s.

http://charlesdickenspage.com/ – Dedicated to sharing the life of Charles Dickens and how he come about his writing.

http://crimeinthecommunity.wordpress.com/ – A good resource written by a collection of guest bloggers using the Old Bailey Proceedings Online and London Lives websites.

http://www.djo.org.uk/ – This is a collection of Dickens journals online with original images.

http://www.findmypast.co.uk/ – An ancestry research website. User friendly and great starting point for all up and coming researchers.

http://library.harvard.edu/digital-collections – A selection of digital resources on a number of topics.

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/– A full loaded search engine detailing the texts of all criminal trials between 1674-1913

http://past.oxfordjournals.org/ – A historical journal bringing together the work of young historians and international scholars to come up with the most recent research on Britain’s history.

 

http://spitalfieldslife.com/ – A journal about Spitalfields in London’s East End, written daily by an independent author.

http://wellcomelibrary.org – One of the world’s major resources for the study of medical history.

Specifically for Images

http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/page/Home.html – One of the world’s richest and most unique collections of images.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary – The British Library’s Flikr account, where original image references are readily available.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/ – This BBC site has a large archive of art collections, along with descriptions of where each particular work is being displayed.

 

Specifically for blog posts about Convicts

http://foundersandsurvivors.org/ – A community history database containing information on convicts sent to Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania.

http://portal.archives.tas.gov.au/menu.aspx?search=11%20 – A search database for convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land – now Tasmania.

 http://www.nma.gov.au/collections/highlights/convict-tokens – A collection of convict love tokens, explain the story behind the owners and their loved ones.

http://love-tokens.nma.gov.au/ – A collection of love tokens created by The National Museum of Australia. They have over 314 convict love tokens from around the globe.

– Original post on prisonvoices.org created by Katrina Murray

– Images searched for by Kim Athawes and Katy Pickersgill