The Union of Jewish Students is offering a massively subsidised educational experience including a day trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Funded by the Lessons from Auschwitz University Project, the course comprises an online seminar about the Holocaust, an in-person seminar on campus focusing on Jewish life and anti-Semitism on campus, a day trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a concluding online seminar for just £59.

Like diamonds, few pearls today are found by chance. Unlike diamonds, which can be manufactured on demand in a laboratory, pearls are still grown organically. Literally, they are grown inside of shellfish in response to a deliberately introduced irritant. I would sign off here saying ‘the rest is history’ but as this video shows, the process is actually surprisingly involved and painstaking care has to be taken to ensure a smooth, even, entire pearl is produced every time. It’s truly an expert process.

The past is a largely undiscovered country. Explore what came before around the world in our new Archives Unbound collections: Not only but also… The Daily Mirror Archive is now also live through Gale Primary Resources (1903-2000). Search the UK’s …

New oldness! Historical archives unbound Read more »

We are excited to begin the new year by presenting you with the archives of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) covering 1482-2010.
Funded by research funding from our success in the last Research Excellence Framework exercise, this archive of historical geography is extensive and includes Maps, Atlases, Charts and Plans; Expedition Reports; Fieldnotes, Correspondence and Diaries; Grey Literature; Photographs, Artwork and Illustrations; Journal Manuscripts; Photographs; Proceedings, Lectures, and Ephemera. The collection spans a wide variety of interdisciplinary research areas, and supports educational needs in Anthropology, Area Studies; Cartography and Visualizations, Colonial, Post-Colonial & Decolonisation Studies; Development Studies; Environmental Degradation; Historical & Cultural Geography; Historical Sociology; Human Geography; Identity, Gender & Ethnic Studies; Geology; International Relations; Trade and Commerce, and Law and Policy relating to Colonization and over a hundred special collections.

Gale Primary Sources and AM are both fantastic sources of primary resources for anyone studying the history of many subjects. Documentary sources run the gamut from British and US intelligence to crime, punishment and popular culture in the 19th century, and from the history of sexuality to political extremism, taking in many 18th and 19 century British and US newspapers along the way.

Portsmouth in 1945, viewed from the air.

The National Library of Scotland has made over 6,000 digitised air photo mosaics available that show detailed information on the landscape of wartime England and Wales in the 1940s. These complement the Scottish air photo mosaics that have been available online since 2009. Selected towns and cities are shown at larger scales, including Portsmouth. A handful of original air photo mosaics for parts of Portsmouth are available to view in the Map Library, which show clearly the damage sustained by the city during the Second World War.

We are delighted to announce that we have just added another eresource from AM Digital (formerly Adam Matthew) that is very relevant to Portsmouth: Life at sea. This new database gives you access to three centuries of archives from the UK and America that chronicle the lives of ordinary seamen, merchants, whalers, and pirates.