Royal Society Historic Scientific Papers

The Royal Society has put online their historical journal archive. The archive consists of some 60,000 historical scientific papers dating back as far as 1665. This is a fun collection to browse through even if you have no ancestors who were scientists. Included in this collection is Benjamin Franklin’s famous paper on his electrical experiments with kites, geological papers written by Charles Darwin plus Sir Isaac Newton’s first published scientific paper. The archive can be searched by author, title of the paper and time period. Access is free.

British Newspaper Archive

Launching soon, the British Newspaper Archive will make millions of pages of historical newspapers available online for the first time – unlocking a treasure trove of material for historians, researchers, genealogists, students and anyone interested in when, where and how our ancestors lived and key periods of historical interest.

Highlights will include:
•Contemporary reporting of major events – vivid first-hand detail and reaction to key events including the Crimean War, the Irish famine, the Great Exhibition and the Boer War
•Family notices – a wealth of detail from sources such as births, deaths and marriages, obituaries and related announcements
•Local and regional press – supplementing national titles already available online, the Archive will feature a wide range of local and regional titles over many decades
•Fully searchable online by date, title and keywords – transforming access to material previously only available in the British Library Reading Rooms as print or microfilm

More than 1 million pages of pre-1900 newspapers will be available at launch, building to 4 million digitised pages over the next 2 years.