Data Resources

Author

Sharon Howard

Modified

23 July 2025

This is a list of historical datasets, APIs and other data resources that I may use on this site.

I created some, or worked on the projects that produced them, and have already used them in research or plan to do so. The rest are quite assorted and random; stuff that I’ve come across that looks potentially interesting and usable.

The majority of the datasets consist of English-language text data, and focus on British, north American or Australian sources and history. Further information should be found at the links (and via google searches). Many will be open data, but exact status should be verified before use.

I’ll add more as I find them. In part it’s a reference for my own use - to give me ideas and draw together scattered bookmarks and links in a place I might actually be able find them when I want them. But other readers may also find it useful.

Reflecting the diversity of historical sources and the priorities of projects that have digitised them, the datasets can be expected to range from relatively small ‘boutique’ data to large text corpora. They might have been transcribed by hand or using OCR. They’ll undoubtedly vary in terms of complexity, structure, clean/tidyness and ease of use. They vary a lot in terms of helpful documentation!

My personal projects

APIs

Literary/linguistic text corpora

Women and gender

Social history

Political/diplomatic/military

Economic/environmental/material culture

Books, printing, visual, performing arts

Newspaper data

Geospatial data

Libraries, archives, museums

Useful R data packages for historians

More sources

A few resources for working with data