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British Library Doctoral Open Day
by Emily Ward The British Library is one of those resources which can be so initially overwhelming that you don’t know the first place to start in order to make the best use of it. With over 56 million items, even navigating through the 17 different online catalogues seemed a daunting prospect to me. It…
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Web Archives as Big Data: experimenting with the internet as a historical source
by Marta Musso On the 3rd of December, the Institute for Historical Research hosted a conference on the challenges and opportunities that the digital world offers to researchers in the humanities. As we live in the middle of the digital revolution, we don’t have full perception of the massive changes that the switch to digital…
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Historical Voices
By Kayt Button, @kayt_button Today we collect a vast array of readily available information in the form of statistics, stories, reports, and videos available publicly on the internet or through more official channels. These are created by journalists, public servants, and the public at large who are able to self-publish. Before the advent of what has…
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The British Library: Ivory Tower?
By Fred Smith @Fred_E_Smith The British Library is overflowing with young, frappuccino-supping undergraduates more interested in checking Facebook and watching Netflix than carrying out ‘serious’ research. At least this is the impression one might take from reading an article in The Times newspaper last month.[1] Several prominent academics, including former professor of Renaissance literature at the University…
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Bringing archives back to life
By Alex Wakelam | @A_Wakelam Archives can be peculiar places. Each comes with its own personal variety of watchful archivists, identification requirements, seating regulations and occasionally (for those who’ve tried to enter the almost impenetrable fortress that is the Bodleian) oaths to swear. They sometimes seem like sacred historical spaces (Cathedral archives often literally are)…
doinghistoryinpublic.org 