FAQ

• Frequently asked questions
• Screencasts

Frequently asked questions

What am I searching here?

You are searching external historical resources that relate to Britain between 1500 and 1900.

I followed a link from a search result and was denied access. What went wrong?

Some of the sites we link to do require a subscription. If you have institutional access to a resource you may need to log in to it before following the link.

I followed a link from a search result and got an error message. What went wrong?

This is highly likely to be caused by a problem with the external site, and is not within our control.

When I searched for a name it gave me a place result. Why?

In some cases the categorisation has been done by software, which cannot be flawlessly accurate.

Why are the snippets shown for some resources hard to read?

Some of the resources included in Connected Histories have used Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in their digitisation process. This means that the text has been interpreted by a computer programme rather than a person. For earlier printed material in particular OCR often fails to recognise or distinguish certain characters (for example, the difference between a lower case 'l' and the number '1') and this produces the results that you can see here.

What is a workspace? What can I do there?

Everyone who registers will have a free account on the site with its own workspace. When logged in you will see a "My workspace" link in the top right-hand corner of the screen. In your workspace you can save searches that you have found productive, save individual documents, and save connections, so that you can return to these at any time.

What are connections?

A connection is a grouping of two or more documents or images that are linked by a theme (such as a person, subject or place) which the user can choose. Users tag their connections to make them easier for others to find. You can look at the public connections, add to them, or create your own.

How do I make a connection?

You will need to register with the site (this is free). From a search you can select individual results by clicking in the checkboxes to the side of each one, then click on the "Save selected results" button on the right. You will now be prompted to add these results to an existing connection or to make a new one. For new connections you are invited to fill in some fields describing the connection - the more information you add the more useful it will be. Finally you can choose to keep the connection private or to share it.

Do I have to make my connections public?

No, you can choose to keep them private if you wish. But sharing connections means that others can add to them, which will help your research, and makes the site more useful to everyone.

What search operators can I use?

Use * for wildcards (e.g. Ta*lor returns Taylor and Tailor); a minus sign directly before a word functions as NOT (e.g. Taylor -Tailor returns instances of documents containing Taylor which don't contain Tailor); using double quotes returns an exact string (e.g. "Earl of Sandwich"). If you enter text without double quotes any of the words used are returned, equating to the Boolean OR operator (e.g. Earl of Sandwich returns documents with the word Earl or the word Sandwich).

I've found a mistake. Can it be corrected?

We have no control over the content of the external sites. You will need to contact the sites directly.

Can you tell me more about something I found here

? You can find out more about the material included in Connected Histories on our Resources page and there are also some useful hints and tips in our Research Guides. However, unfortunately we cannnot help with individual research or essays.

I have forgotten my username, can you remind me of it?

You can retrieve your username with the email account you registered. Go to Register Now and follow instructions.

Can my content be included in Connected Histories?

We are very happy to consider new content. Please see New Content Information

Can I link to Connected Histories?

Yes, you may provide hyperlinks to the website. A hyperlink must display the page in the same form as this website, without amendment or framing.

Will you include a link to my website on Connected Histories?

Unfortunately we do not link to external sites.

Screencasts

Connected Histories: Introduction An introduction to the Connected Histories project, explaining how you can search, what resources are included, and what background material is available.