New Online Resources Round-up

by Kathryn Hadley

Over the past month, a considerable number of databases of online resources have been launched. Here is a small selection…

The "Peninsula Roll Call" went live last month. The project was led by the Napoleon Series in conjunction with the Royal United Services Institute. The “Peninsula Roll Call” is the work of Captain Lionel S. Challis who spent 30 years researching British officers who served in the Peninsula War between 1808 and 1814. It consists of biographical data on over 9,600 officers, including information about the wounds they received, the battles they fought in and the medals that they received.
It is available online at
http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/biographies/GreatBritain/Challis/c_ChallisIntro.html.

The 1911 census is now available online at www.1911census.co.uk. The census was taken on the night of Sunday 2nd April, 1911, and recorded 36 million people. It covered England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It also recorded those on board Royal Navy and Merchant ships at sea and in foreign ports and, for the first time in a British census, it provided details of British army personnel and their families in military establishments overseas. The 1911 census was also the first to ask questions relating to fertility in marriage, such as how long women had been married and how many children they had born from that marriage. The database includes original handwritten census returns and contains details about the lives of important British historical figures such as David Lloyd George, the contemporary Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and Virginia Woolf. The project was developed by the UK-based family history website findmypast.com in association with the National Archives.

Palladio and Britain is a new online resource launched by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) at the end of last week. It is designed as a complement to the exhibition Andrea Palladio: His Life and Legacy which opened on Saturday at the Royal Academy of Arts, in celebration of the 500th anniversary of Palladio’s birth. The website enables users to explore the RIBA’s unparalleled collection of Palladio’s books and drawings and provides an insight into Palladio’s influence on British architects from the 16th century to the present day. Visit www.architecture.com/palladio.

There is more to come…
The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) has recently announced that over 3,000 searchable postal records will go online on the BPMA website on March 2nd. The records include listings of the covers of Penny Posts, Mileage Marks and Missent Marks held in the philatelic collection of the BPMA. The BPMA is also planning to make further listings available online over the course of the year, including Shipped Letters, London Markings and Railway Letters. The records will be available at www.postalheritage.org.uk.