Databases A-Z

Apartheid South Africa makes available British government files from the Foreign, Colonial, Dominion, and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices. These previously restricted letters, diplomatic dispatches, reports, trial papers, activists’ biographies and first-hand accounts of events give unprecedented access to the history of South Africa’s apartheid regime. The files explore the relationship of the international community with South Africa and chart increasing civil unrest against a backdrop of waning colonialism in Africa and mounting world condemnation.

The Bodleian Libraries hold the first section of Apartheid South Africa, covering 1948 to 1966.

ArabDigest is a source of information and political analysis on current events in the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Digest members have access to articles and podcasts containing a mix of material drawn from a wide range of published sources together with original input from the editor and Arab Digest’s high-level network. Members have the option to sign up to receive the daily newsletter and podcasts direct to their emails or can access them at any time via the website. 
 

Eastern European Newspaper Archive, containing scientific and professional journals, weekly and daily newspapers, encyclopaedias, and thematic book collections.

The Baghdad Observer was the official English-language newspaper of the Iraqi government from its establishment after the 1963 coup and through the Ba'athist period following 1968, until it ended publication in 2003 due to the Iraq War. It covered significant events in Middle Eastern history, including the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979), the presidency of Saddam Hussein (1979-2003), the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), and the Gulf War (1990-1991).

This collection of RAM records reproduces the writings and statements of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) and its leaders. It also covers organizations that evolved from or were influenced by RAM and persons that had close ties to RAM. The most prominent organization that evolved from RAM was the African People's Party. Organizations influenced by RAM include the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, Youth Organization for Black Unity, African Liberation Support Committee, and the Republic of New Africa. Individuals associated with RAM and documented in this collection include Robert F. Williams, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, General Gordon Baker Jr., Yuri Kochiyama, Donald Freeman, James and Grace Lee Boggs, Herman Ferguson, Askia Muhammad Toure (Rolland Snellings), and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).

The Chernobyl Newspapers Collection includes three local newspapers published in towns in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and its immediate vicinity:

• Prapor peremohy (Прапор перемоги, Victory Flag)
• Tribuna Energetika (Трибуна Энергетика, Energy Workers' Tribune)
• Trybuna pratsi (Трибуна праці, Labor Tribune)

Digitized in two parts from the FO 17 series of British Foreign Office Files held at the UK National Archives, Part II of Imperial China and the West provides General Correspondence relating to China from 1865–1905. Here, scholars will find material relating to the internal politics of China and Britain, their relationship, and the relationships among other Western powers— keen to benefit from the growing trading ports of the Far East—and China’s neighbours in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. The FO 17 series provides a vast and significant resource for researching every aspect of China-West relations during the nineteenth century, ranging from diplomacy and war, to trade, piracy, riots and rebellions within China, international law, treaty ports and informal empire, transnational emigration, and translation and cross-cultural communication.

This collection is a mixture of issues and papers from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, and Alabama ranging from 1861-1865. These newspapers "recorded the real and true history of public opinion during the war. In their columns is to be found the only really correct and indicative 'map of busy life, its fluctuations and its vast concerns' in the South, during her days of darkness and of trial." From the collections of Western Reserve Historical Society.

Alternative name: Country Data

Country risk ratings and forecasts. Data are available for more than 140 countries, going back to 1984 for most countries and including risk ratings and economic data from International Country Risk Guide, as well as forecasts, economic, political, geographic, and social data from Political Risk Services. CountryData is updated monthly and is the gateway to current and historical data from The PRS Group.

Dar al-Mandumah provides access to a series of databases with full-text content of Arabic scientific conferences, dissertations, and academic journals from 1921 to present day. Content is mainly in Arabic and English. The databases included are:

• EduSearch (education)
• HumanIndex (humanities)
• IslamicInfo (Islamic studies and Islamic law)
• AraBase (language and literature)
• EcoLink (economic and management studies)
• Mandumah Dissertations

Alternative names: Dostoevskii: Materialy i Issledovaniia ; EB-DRS

This series is a companion to the 30 volume Collected works of Fyodor Dostoevsky published by Pushkinskii Dom. The series includes contemporary issues in Dostoyevsky scholarship, letters addressed to the writer, materials and documents covering his biography and critical analysis of this works.

This collection of ephemera (brochures, clothing items, booklets, flyers, etc.) offers important insights into LGBTQ activism in Eastern Europe and the Balkans in the past decade. It includes 140 items (more than 2,000 pages) of valuable research materials collected by East View in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland and Serbia.

Source institution: UK National Archives
Date range: 1840-1927

Egypt and the Rise of Nationalism includes more than 4,000 primary source documents from the UK National Archives relating to the period of the British military occupation in Egypt. Consisting of British Foreign Office, Cabinet Office and War Office files, amongst others, this collection captures the development of nationalist sensibilities, movements, and publications in Egypt from the 1870s until the third decade of the twentieth century, culminating with the formal dissolution of the British protectorate in 1924.

Never formally described as part of the “British Empire” by successive British governments, that relationship may have been inferred, applied by the popular press, or understood to be a colonial relationship by the public. Britain was certainly an administering power but the term “protectorate” was a debated definition of the relationship as early as 1884. The eventual end of British occupation marked the emergence of modern Egypt.

Published in three parts, this collection makes available extensive coverage of British Foreign Office files dealing with Japan between 1919 and 1952, shedding light on Anglo-Japanese ties in a time of shifting alliances. This second module covers the Occupation period (1946-1952). Following surrender at the end of the Second World War, Japan was occupied by Allied Powers for the first time in its history. The files for this period offer a British perspective on the creation of a democratic state in Japan and the enforcement of a new constitution. They include key British communications and reports covering topics such as war crime trials, reparations, and Japan’s economic recovery. They conclude in 1952, the year the Treaty of San Francisco normalised Anglo-Japanese relations and the first post-war British Ambassador to Japan, Esler Dening, was appointed. The majority of documents in this section are sourced from FO 371, with a smaller number from FO 262.

The Researchers’ Dataset Table 3B provides annual averages of the 12 components of Political Risk Rating, as published in the International Country Risk Guide [ICRG]. Average ratings are provided for all countries covered by the ICRG from 1984 until the latest full calendar year.

Alternative name: John Benjamins Compact EBA 2019-2024

Until 18 June 2025, over 650 ebooks in linguistics, translation studies, and related fields, published between 2019 and 2024, are available via this EBA (evidence-based acquisitions) programme online to University members via SOLO. This will include new publications as they come out during the year. At the end of the period, we will make a selection of books based on appearance on reading lists and heavy use during the period. These selections will be added permanently to the ebook collection of the Bodleian Libraries.

Klassiki is a video-on-demand platform which is dedicated exclusively to cinema from Eastern Europe – including Ukraine, Russia, and the Baltics – the Caucasus and Central Asia. Klassiki features a library of over 100 titles, spanning silent cinema to the 2020s, a film Pick of the Week feature, and a Journal area of related content including interviews, essays and national cinema overviews. A potentially useful resource to students of film, visual culture and modern languages.

LexiQamus is an aggregator for all major dictionaries of Ottoman Turkish matching the given restrictions. With LexiQamus, you can find a word with missing or unclear letters almost immediately, a task that would have been almost impossible with a regular dictionary. (https://www.lexiqamus.com/en)

Alternative names: Literary Manuscripts Leeds Collection ; Literary MSS Leeds

Complete images of 190 manuscripts of seventeenth and eighteenth-century verse held in the celebrated Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds. Alongside original compositions are copied verses, translations, songs and riddles. The whole collection is situated within an assortment of manuscripts, some entirely dedicated to poetry, while others contain medicinal recipes, household accounts, draft letters, musical scores and plays. There are also several printed works, with handwritten verse additions.

Alternative name: Le Monde

Le Monde is one of the newspapers of record for France. The newspaper website is available in French and English versions, which can be selected at the top of the page.

Muteferriqa, by artificial intelligence company Miletos, is an online research portal containing an exceptionally rich collection of printed materials published in the Ottoman Empire from the 18th to mid-20th century. It lets you perform full-text search in Latin and Arabic scripts within seconds across millions of pages of its corpus, which consists of virtually all the books and a large majority of periodicals ever printed in Ottoman Turkish. Refining queries through rich and extensive metadata gives relevant cross-sections of the material.

Narodna armiia (Народна армія, People’s Army) was released at the beginning of Ukrainian independence and with the newly created Armed Forces of Ukraine as successor to the Soviet military publication of the Ukrainian SSR, Leninskoe znamia (Lenin’s Banner). Published in Kyiv from 1991-2018, this Ukrainian-language publication details the creation, reform, and redevelopment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine with a particular focus on military training, international military cooperation, and social benefits for servicemen and their family members. Correspondents also covered the activities of Ukrainian peacekeepers in UN operations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the activities of the Ukrainian-Polish battalion in Kosovo.

Established in 1991 on the eve of the Ukrainian declaration of independence, Nezavisimost’ (Независимость, Independence) was an independent, high-profile Russian-language daily and a successor publication to Komsomolskoe znamya (Komsomol Banner, initially called Stalinskoe plemya [Stalin’s Tribe]), with a long history as a Soviet publication. One of the most popular newspapers in the early years of Ukrainian independence, Nezavisimost’ covered domestic and international politics, business and economic affairs, and popular culture, becoming a lively outlet for social and political commentary, opinion and analysis.

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Noor Digital Library (Noorlib) is a full-text e-book database administered by the Computer Research Center of Islamic Sciences (CRCIS) in Iran. Noor Digital Library contains more than 88000 digitised book volumes from within the humanities, mostly in Arabic and Persian, with a particular focus on Islamic Studies.

Noormags is a journal database administered by the Computer Research Center of Islamic Sciences (CRCIS) in Iran. Noormags offers digitized versions of specialized journals concerning Islamic studies, social sciences and the humanities. The extensive text-image database has become one of the most important databases for academic texts in Persian, also featuring content in Arabic and English.

Source: U.S. National Archives
Date Range: 1945-1959

This archive traces the period that saw the end of the British mandate in Palestine. Documents address the role of the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations and that of the United States in the creation of the state of Israel. Included here are the Palestine Reference files of Dean Rusk and Robert McClintock, as well as documents from the Mission of the United States in Tel-Aviv. The years 1955-1959 contain instructions and correspondences of the U.S. Department of State. Most of the State Department’s internal documentation as well as correspondence between the State Department and other federal departments and agencies, in addition to documents from private individuals and organizations, are included in the central files. Documents types comprise official and unofficial correspondence, inquiries, memoranda, situation reports and studies, special reports, and telegrams. The files offer insight into a range of subjects including the politics, laws, military, economy, industry, natural resources, public works, and media of Palestine and Israel. The documents in this collection are sourced from the Central Files of the General Records of the Department of State. The records are under the jurisdiction of the Legislative and Diplomatic Branch of the Civil Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

This collection of Amiri Baraka materials was made available by Dr. Komozi Woodard. Dr. Woodard collected these documents during his career as an activist in Newark, New Jersey. The collection consists of rare works of poetry, organizational records, print publications, over one hundred articles, poems, plays, and speeches by Baraka, a small amount of personal correspondence, and oral histories. The collection has been arranged into eighteen series. These series are: (1) Black Arts Movement; (2) Black Nationalism; (3) Correspondence; (4) Newark (New Jersey); (5) Congress of African People; (6) National Black Conferences and National Black Assembly; (7) Black Women's United Front; (8) Student Organization for Black Unity; (9) African Liberation Support Committee; (10) Revolutionary Communist League; (11) African Socialism; (12) Black Marxists; (13) National Black United Front; (14) Miscellaneous Materials, 1978-1988; (15) Serial Publications; (16) Oral Histories; (17) Woodard's Office Files.

The collection consists of materials from the years 1913 through 1998 that document African American author and activist Amiri Baraka and were gathered by Dr. Komozi Woodard in the course of his research. The extensive documentation includes poetry, organizational records, print publications, articles, plays, speeches, personal correspondence, oral histories, as well as some personal records. The materials cover Baraka's involvement in the politics in Newark, N.J. and in Black Power movement organizations such as the Congress of African People, the National Black Conference movement, the Black Women's United Front. Later materials document Baraka's increasing involvement in Marxism.

Provides a comprehensive record of the performance history of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessor, the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. Browse and compare almost 1,400 prompt books to uncover how productions took shape, and explore the creative process behind the company's most important presentations in extensive additional documentation including production records, costume designs, music files and photographs.

Alternative name: South Asian Newspapers, 1864-1922
Online access to a select group of South Asian newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries, including such titles as Amrita Bazar Patrika (Calcutta), Bankura Darpana (Bankura, India), Madras Mail (Madras), Kayasare Hinda (Bombay), Pioneer (Allahabad, India), Tribune (Lahore, Pakistan) and the Ceylon Observer (Sri Lanka).

Access to over 1,400 e-books in Literature, Cultural and Media Studies published by Springer Nature from 2021 to 2024. This will include new publications as they come out during 2024. Individual e-books will be listed in SOLO.

At the end of the access period, we will select books based on appearance on reading lists and heavy use during the period. These selections will be added permanently to the e-book collection of the Bodleian Libraries.

To note: the Springer history collections for 2021-2024 are already part of the Bodleian Libraries' permanent collections, and books are listed individually in SOLO.

Access to over 1,100 e-books in Philosophy and Religion published by Springer Nature from 2021 to 2024. This will include new publications as they come out during 2024. Individual e-books will be listed in SOLO.

At the end of the access period, we will select books based on appearance on reading lists and heavy use during the period. These selections will be added permanently to the e-book collection of the Bodleian Libraries.

To note: the Springer history collections for 2021-2024 are already part of the Bodleian Libraries' permanent collections, and books are listed individually in SOLO.