Dec 14, 2004
And, over at the British Library
While we're all in the mood for online archives, check out the British Library'sCollect Britain website. Name notwithstanding, it's not just British history.
I'm no gardener (I'm just saying, you don't want to leave me looking after your houseplants while you go on holiday) but I've fallen in love with the Lost Gardens 'themed tour', with manuscript and printed images of gardens real and imagined, plants (neat tests of your herb knowledge and where plants found in Britain originated from), a section on John Evelyn, and considerably more. Absolutely beautiful.
Themed selections from the BL collections include Victorian popular music; Svadesh Videsh, a"survey of the landscape and architectural heritage of South Asia [which] spans the late-18th to mid-20th centuries"; Caribbean Views, plantation life during the 18th and 19th centuries; and images from the Illuminated Manuscripts collections.
There are thousands of images and documents digitised here, but the search engine is pretty good for finding things of interest; the advanced search especially gives a good range of options. Plus, you can register (for free) for 'personalised' services including personal folders to store links to items of interest to you, and email newsletters.
It's making me feel quite warm and fuzzy towards the National Lottery (source of large wads of funding), and that doesn't happen very often, I can tell you.
I'm no gardener (I'm just saying, you don't want to leave me looking after your houseplants while you go on holiday) but I've fallen in love with the Lost Gardens 'themed tour', with manuscript and printed images of gardens real and imagined, plants (neat tests of your herb knowledge and where plants found in Britain originated from), a section on John Evelyn, and considerably more. Absolutely beautiful.
Themed selections from the BL collections include Victorian popular music; Svadesh Videsh, a"survey of the landscape and architectural heritage of South Asia [which] spans the late-18th to mid-20th centuries"; Caribbean Views, plantation life during the 18th and 19th centuries; and images from the Illuminated Manuscripts collections.
There are thousands of images and documents digitised here, but the search engine is pretty good for finding things of interest; the advanced search especially gives a good range of options. Plus, you can register (for free) for 'personalised' services including personal folders to store links to items of interest to you, and email newsletters.
It's making me feel quite warm and fuzzy towards the National Lottery (source of large wads of funding), and that doesn't happen very often, I can tell you.