The British Periodicals Collections I and II have been purchased by JISC Collections and are available free of charge to UK Higher and Further Education institutions and Research Councils.
Institutions now have free online access to nearly 6.1 million pages from over 460 journals published from the 1681 to the 1937 covering subjects such as archaeology, architecture, art, the fine arts, drama, history, literature, music, philosophy, science and the social sciences.
An access fee may apply after 31/05/2013.
Content description
British Periodicals traces the development and growth of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century through to the Victorian "age of periodicals" and beyond. This unique digital archive consists of almost 500 periodical runs published from the 1680s to the 1930s, comprising six million keyword-searchable pages and forming an unrivalled record of more than two centuries of British history and culture.
British Periodicals consists of two separate collections, British Periodicals Collection I and British Periodicals Collection II:
British Periodicals Collection I consists of more than 160 journals that comprise the UMI microfilm collection Early British Periodicals, the equivalent of 5,238 printed volumes containing approximately 3.1 million pages. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.
British Periodicals Collection II consists of more than 300 journals from the UMI microfilm collections English Literary Periodicals and British Periodicals in the Creative Arts together with additional titles, amounting to almost 3 million pages. Topics covered include literature, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
Among the periodicals included in British Periodicals are titles founded, edited or regularly contributed to by a host of important figures - Walter Bagehot, Aubrey Beardsley, Annie Besant, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Frances Power Cobbe, William Cobbett, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, Ford Madox Ford, Oliver Goldsmith, Leigh Hunt, Jerome K Jerome, Samuel Johnson, Sir Roger L'Estrange, G. H. Lewes, Harriet Martineau, Edward Moore, John Morley, John Henry Newman, Margaret Oliphant, W. M. Rossetti, Sir Richard Steele and Tobias Smollett to name but a few.
In addition to providing access to the original periodical version of landmark texts like De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Cobbett's Rural Rides, Bagehot's The English Constitution, Gaskell's North and South and Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, the collection offers new ways of exploring the inaccessible, neglected or forgotten writings that formed their original contexts.
A wide array of different types of periodical are represented, from magisterial quarterlies and scholarly and professional organs through to coterie art periodicals, penny weeklies and illustrated family magazines.
The title lists for British Periodicals are available in various formats within the resources themselves (by visiting Information Resources and clicking Title Lists) and can be viewed here.
In addition, institutions with access to ProQuest's Periodicals Archive Online (PAO, formerly PCI Full Text) are able to search British Periodicals' titles with those in PAO, providing users with simultaneous access to hundreds of historical periodicals from one search, as well as the more current literature about those authors and topics an PAO's scholarly journals.
The content in British Periodicals provides access to more than 460 journals, the majority of which have not been previously digitised in any format.
The searchable full text in British Periodicals enables researchers to carry out in-depth analysis of the changing attitudes and assumptions of British Writers over a period of 250 years and across a range of key themes including:
- The slave trade
- Irish nationalism and Partition
- Class and social issues
- Empire and trade
- European wars and World War I
- The Industrial Revolution
Main subject areas
Subject areas supported by British Periodicals include Literature, History, Fine Art, Architecture, Archaeology, Music, Drama, Women's Studies, Popular Culture, Philosophy and History of Science.
Academic level
Undergraduate and postgraduate research
Date range
Content from journals included in British Periodicals ranges from 1681 to 1939.
Updates
British Periodicals I & II are closed collections which will not have content updates.
Testimonials, Case Studies or User Reviews
"Scanned from microfilm, the collections comprise page images available in multiple formats (PDF, TIFF, or grayscale JPG) to make downloading, printing and viewing easier... In addition to a basic search box on every page, advanced article search pages are identical for both collections and allow for very precise searching by keywords in citations, full text, or combination, or keywords in title; and browsing by author, journal title, journal editor, or journal subject... These impressive, unique collections will be true assets for any historical collection. They offer excellent searching capabilities, metadata, and access points."
- S. Markgren (Purchase College, SUNY), for CHOICE magazine, April 2008.
Additional content
British Periodicals is fully cross-searchable with the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals online. The Wellesley Index identifies the authors of articles within 45 major Victorian Periodicals, and provides a bibliography for each contributor. It incorporates the Curran Index of corrections and additions to the original index. Additional subscription fees are applicable for this content.
Publisher's selection policy
Content for British Periodicals has been selected from the UMI microfilm collections: Early British Periodicals, British Periodicals in the Creative Arts and English Literary Periodicals. In addition, seven extra journals have been added so that British Periodicals includes the full text of all the journals included in the Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals.
Complementary resources
Institutions with access to both British Periodicals Collections I and II and Periodicals Archives Online are able to cross-search titles in both resources. This provides users with simultaneous access to hundreds of historical periodicals, as well as the more current literature about those authors and topics in Periodicals Archives Online's journals from one search.
Cost
You can subscribe to this content via the publisher's platform. Access to the content is free until 31 December 2013. An access fee may be required after this date.
Alternatively, institutions can host the content for a one-off payment of £500.
Subscription and licensing
Functionality and standards compliance
Full text linking
British Periodicals is a source for inbound OpenURL referrals and all contents and functional pages feature durable URLs, using OpenURL syntax.
Federated searching
British Periodicals supports both z39.50 and XML Gateway mechanisms.
MARC records
Bibliographic records are available free of charge, in MARC21 (Machine-Readable Cataloguing) format, for the journals included in British Periodicals. These can be loaded into catalogue systems and contain durable links (in the 856) field to journal record pages in the database.
Metadata standards
The British Periodicals metadata specification is essentially an extended version of the Periodicals Archive Online (PAO) metadata specification and includes information from article source (Author, Article Title, Journal Title, Journal Editor, Volume, Issue, Date, Pagination, Place of Publication), the Frequency of Publication of the periodicals included, the Content Type of particular articles (allowing users to search for Advertisements, Articles, Poems, Reviews, etc), and the presence within each article of graphic elements (Cartoons, Maps, Printed Music etc). The metadata also includes Journal Subject indexing (using Library of Congress Subject Headings).
Search options
British Periodicals has a range of search options. The Home Page has a one-box quick search option which allows users to search keywords from Article Title and Text, Article Author, Article Title or Journal Title. The quick search feature is available on every page of the site, making it possible to search the complete collection quickly and efficiently.
A more detailed "Article Search" screen offers further options, including:
- Select from a List
- Include Wellesley attributions (in institutions that have access to ProQuest's electronic edition of the Wellesley Index)
- Limit results by content types such as obituaries, advertisements, poems, recipes, graphics, letters, reviews and more
- Limit results by frequency of publication
- Narrow date selections
- Sort results by relevance, alphabetically or chronologically
The Search Results display allows users to filter results according to the following criteria:
- Journal Title
- Journal Subject
- Date
- Frequency of publication
- Journal Editor
- Article Type
It's possible to browse for journals in British Periodicals by title or to search for Journal Records by Title, Editor, Subject, Frequency of Publication, Date of Publication, and / or Place of Publication, using the Search Journal Records screen.
Post-search options
Search History and Market Lists allow users to review and combine searches during a session and mark up results of interest for exporting, saving and printing.
A My Archive feature allows users to save searches between visits in a personal, password-protected area.
Citations can be downloaded and emailed in various formats. Citations can also be exported directly to RefWorks, ProCite, EndNote and Reference Manager.
Usage statistics
British Periodicals offers both product-specific reports and COUNTER-compliant usage reports.
Authentication
Federated access management via the UK Access Management Federation, ATHENS.
Personalisation of the online resource
Institutions can personalise British Periodicals by adding library branding.
Accessibility
Compliant with W3C Priority 1, some compliance with Priorities 2 and 3.
Library support information