British Online Archives is one of the UK's leading academic publishers, with 100+ primary source collections for researchers to delve into. They curate and digitise sought-after archives across a broad range of themes, such as media, culture, politics, religion, and colonialism to name a few.
New Releases
Sourced from the Illustrated London News, a pioneer in global print media
Spanning 100+ years of cultural history, from High Society to the Swinging Sixties
Comprises 9 collections, 10,000+ documents, and 560,000+ pages
Out now: Britannia and Eve, The Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, London Life, The Sketch, and The Tatler
Coming soon: The Bystander, The Graphic, Illustrated War News, and The Sphere
Details what successive British governments wanted their citizens to know, think, and do in the post-war period, and what image of Britain they wanted to project to the rest of the world
Contains a carefully curated selection of publicity and propaganda materials, such as posters, stickers, pamphlets and booklets on public health, education, policing, social security, and much more
Comprises 27,000+ images sourced from the British Library
Known as "Bedlam", Bethlem Royal Hospital was a notorious psychiatric facility
Its records include admission, discharge, and death registers, male and female patient casebooks, criminal casebooks, and much more
The collection explores how mental illness was conceptualised, diagnosed, treated and mistreated from the 16th to the 20th century
Comprises 130,000+ images curated in association with Findmypast and the Bethlem Museum of the Mind
All handwritten items are fully transcribed
Popular Collections
Includes missionary letters, journals and materials from branch locations in Adelaide, Melbourne, North Queensland, Perth, Sydney, and Tasmania
Covers colonial relations with First Nations Australians, and the development of the Church of Australia
Comprises 19,500+ pages sourced from the Bodleian Library
Includes missionary letters, journals and supplementary material from branch locations in New Zealand and Polynesia
Covers colonial relations with Māori and Pacific Islanders, and the progress of the mission in New Zealand
Comprises 8,500+ pages sourced from the Bodleian Library
For Librarians and Researchers
British Online Archives is committed to offering a state-of-the-art service for librarians and researchers alike, with:
Text and data mining for non-commercial purposes, at no additional cost, and with no need for written requests
Improved searching and filtering, with AI machine-learning technology in development
A new IIIF-standard image viewer, with enhanced image quality and deep-zoom capability
Handwritten text recognition for images in newer collections
Contextual essays to introduce collections to new users
Discoverability in Primo and Summon at the collection level
MARC records for all series and collections
COUNTER-5 usage reports via LibLynx.
For more information about British Online Archives, or to arrange a free 30-day institutional trial for any of the collections mentioned above, please contact Bezi at info@bezi.com.au