The 'Connected Histories' project, which is a partnership between the Universities of Sheffield and Hertfordshire, the Institute of Historical Research and King's College London, will create an innovative search engine for a wide range of electronic resources relating to early modern and nineteenth century British history. This period has one of the largest collections of digital sources available on the web, but until now there has been no single starting point to search them. Due to be launched in march 2011, 'Connected Histories' will give access to over 3 million pages of text, maps and images, and is expandable into new areas of history and new digital sources as they become available. Members of the public, and independent researchers as well as students and academics will be able to search freely by names, places, and dates as well as keywords and phrases, though there will be times when the result points to a subscription-only website. We will keep you posted.

 

The University of Essex offers courses in Local and Regional History, that can stand alone or be combined and assess for the Certificate of Continuing Education in Local Historical Studies. www.essex.ac.uk/history/certificate/local-history-cert.shtm

 

The MA in Historical Studies at the University of Lincoln can be studied full or part time, and covers 'Approaches to the study of the past', 'Presenting the past in contemporary culture', 'Local and Regional History' and a research dissertation. The main focus is on 19^th and 20^th century British history, but it options will allow for the study of other chronological or geographical areas. www.lincoln.ac.uk/humanities

 

A lecturer at the University of Huddersfield has been awarded a Leverhulme Trust grant to carry out a three year investigation of Lady Anne Clifford's Great Books of Record. Documentary material to prove Lady Anne's right to inherit her father’s northern lands, together with information on land, family and her own life, was bound into three sets of three large volumes, (kept in different places) that became known as the Great Books of Record. This wealth of historical and cultural material will be transcribed, collated and published by Dr Jessica Malay, and research fellow Dr Sheila Sweetinburgh. www2.hud.ac.uk/news/research_profiles/mhm/jessica_malay.php

 

The programme of Day Schools and Evening Classes run by the College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham continues this year, but will close at the end of July 'in the light of financial and strategic needs'. It is hoped that some of the popular historical events will be maintained through the work of the Centre for West Midlands History. 'War and Society in the West Midlands' is the Centre's annual conference on 20 March, and there will be a day school 'Plant Hunters, Parks and Gardens: developments in garden history in Birmingham and the Midlands' on 27 March. Glassmakers, Anglo-Saxon Art and Architecture, Pre-Raphaelite Art and Literature, and Medieval Churches feature over the next few months. www.historycultures.bham.ac.uk/events/dayschools/index.html

 

Some good news – The newsletter of Berkshire Local History Association reports that the Reading Branch of the WEA 'has gone from strength to strength since it rose phoenix like from the ashes last summer in the wake of the announcement of the closure of Reading University's Department of Continuing Education'. WEAreading@googlemail.com www.blha.org.uk