Launching ‘Stumbling Through History Links’

Stumbling Through History Links is a new page on this blog with over one hundred links to useful Australian history resources. I hope that these will assist you with whatever historical research you are doing, whether you are researching family history or local history, school or academic work. Nearly all the resources listed are free to anyone with an internet connection.

These links used to appear on the right-hand-side of my blog but your responses to my last post were clear. Those who commented said that the links were valuable but most people had not noticed them.  Even when I drew attention to them in my last post, some still found them hard to find. Fair enough. Even I was not using these resources enough.

Over the last day I have copied all the links into the page. By categorising them by topic and by region some gaps became evident. I have added some new links to resources which I have found useful in my research over the years.

There are many, many more good online resources about Australian history. In order to avoid the page becoming unwieldy I have decided not to list the websites of local history societies and museums (unless they have a lot of useful digitised resources). It might be good to include links to sites that list every local history society in a state on one page, if such sites exist.

I have also put my foot down concerning poorly designed websites. I find websites with flashing stars and lurid colours unbearable to view. Such sites have often been poorly maintained and can include dubious sources.

I have generally avoided listing historical resources that are behind a pay-wall. This list shows that there is a huge amount that is freely accessible. Australians can often access subscription services via their state or national libraries at any rate.

There are still some gaps in this collection. I have added very few links pertaining to war history. I have quite a few and will add them when I have time. Some states have more resources than others. There are obvious gaps in the religious history links and I know there are more good indigenous history websites. Other gaps may stand out to you.

Finding good resources is a collaborative effort. Many of the links on this page were brought to my attention by people on social media or readers of this blog, most recently Debbie Robson suggested some Austlit resources to me in her comment on yesterday’s post – thanks Debbie! Other links on the list were found by me searching the internet to find the answer to one research question or another.

I hope that ‘Stumbling Through History Links‘ will help you in your research. I would be grateful if you could fill in the form to tell me about good resources I should add, broken links or other corrections. With your help I hope that this will be a useful resource for everyone now and in the future.