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Digital library

Users of our Library and Archives can access these additional digital resources to aid their research.

The Library subscribes to a number of electronic resources which are available to registered readers within the Science Museum Group's ICT network. They are intended for non-commercial research purposes only—any commercial use is prohibited.


  • The British Newspaper Archive is a partnership between the British Library and findmypast to digitise the British Library's newspaper collections (excluding major broadsheet newspapers). This collection gives access to over 20 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 700 newspaper titles from every part of the UK and Ireland published since 1700. You will need to register when you first use the archive to allow you to search and view the records.
  • Complete Dictionary Of Scientific Biography: nearly 800 in-depth articles of famous and influential scientists from ancient times to the recent past.
  • Discovery Service: hosts the majority of our electronic resources—search for selected ebooks, e-journals and databases, including:
    • Academic Search Elite Database: providing full text for more than 2,100 journals, including more than 1,700 peer-reviewed titles. In addition, indexing and abstracts are provided for over 3,650 journals.
    • Applied Science & Technology Full Text™: containing indexing and abstracts for nearly 800 core English-language, scientific and technical publications back to 1983.
    • Applied Science & Technology Index Retrospective™: indexing more than 1,400 periodicals—with citations to more than three million articles, including book reviews—and contains the complete files of Industrial Arts Index (1913–1957).
    • ERIC, the Education Resource Information Center: providing access to education literature and resources.
    • GreenFILE: offering well-researched information covering all aspects of human impact to the environment.
    • History of science, technology and medicine: integrates four bibliographies: the Isis Current Bibliography of the History of Science, the Current Bibliography in the History of Technology, the Bibliografia Italiana di Storia della Scienza, and the Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.
  • The Illustrated London News Historical Archives: 1842–2003: a completely digital version of the world's first illustrated weekly newspaper, consisting of 260,000 full colour pages.
  • JSTOR: 1,151 digitised full-text journals (over 5 million articles; over 28 million pages) from a wide range of disciplines; includes many science-related journals, such as the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
  • The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: over 57,000 biographies of British people who have shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond.
  • Oxford Reference Online: 175 language and subject reference works in a single cross-searchable resource.
  • The Times Digital Archive: nearly 7.9 million articles from The Times newspaper published from 1785 to 1985.
  • Who’s Who & Who was Who: the famous biographical directory of over 100,000 noteworthy and influential people in all walks of life, in the UK and worldwide, published annually since 1849.