Wednesday 27 July 2016

World Day Against Trafficking in Persons- useful academic resources


30th July is World  Day against Trafficking in Persons.

This was inaugurated as a United Nations Day by A/RES/68/192 in 2013
It aims to raise awareness of the situation of victims of human trafficking and for the promotion and protection of their rights.” and to promote the Global Plan of Action adopted by the United Nations in 2010.

 Useful resources for researching this topic include:
Human Trafficking Portal hosted by UNODC 


This includes a library of legislation and a database of case laws. 

United Nations Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) promotes the global fight on human trafficking, on the basis of international agreements reached at the UN. Its website includes news from an alliance of international agencies including the United Nations, OSCE and ILO providing news on their anti-trafficking programmes

no-trafficking.org is the online resource center for the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP). It  works in six countries across the Greater Mekong Sub-Regoin (GMS): Cambodia, China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.It has a resource centre of reports and statistics.



Protection Project is an NGO whose website also provides free access to a law library of documents and legislation covering anti trafficking intiatives




Monday 18 July 2016

Today is Nelson Mandela day! Try our free academic resources.




Nelson Mandela International Day (or Mandela Day) is an annual international day in honour of Nelson Mandela The day was officially declared by the United Nations in November 2009

See the official UN page for details of Nelson Mandela's life and the aims of the day.
 It includes the 2009 United Nations Resolution establishing the day as a recognition for his work for humanity

The Nelson Mandela Foundation has a webpage covering activities and events for 2016.
the resources section has logos plus lesson plans for teachers, quizzes and even a colouring book

Consult the foundation for a biography of Mandela with photographs and quotations relating to his life and work. The databases section has a catalogue of books, articles and archive resources relating to Mandela, ANC and the Anti-Apartheid movement.


Also related is
Forward to Freedom is an online archive of the British Anti-Apartheid movement 1959-1994. It covers British campaigns to release Mandela. There are online leaflets, posters, oral history accounts and pamphlets .The physical AAM archive is held at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

Monday 4 July 2016

Hurrah for the USA- our recommended US academic research resources !

Here for Independence day are some of our favourite American history resources.
The Declaration of Independence can be viewed online via Library of Congress website.
Its Documents in American history collection also has background drafting documents and papers from many of the founding fathers.
If you want to sing hurrah for America - try this patriotic song from 1916!




Other great American history collections include

  • American Memory from the Library of Congress provides free open access through the Internet to written primary source documents, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. 
  • AMDOCS: Documents for the study of American History Collection of primary documents and speeches essential for the study of US History. Arranged chronologically from earliest times to 2009
  • Founders Online
    Correspondence and other writings of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams (and family), Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. Includes more than 119,000 searchable and annotated documents. 
  • The Fourth of July Orations Collection (University of Missouri)  provides free access to the full text of  pamphlets of addresses made on Independence Day from 1791-1925. The speeches explore topics central to the developing United States 
  • New York Public Library's Digital Gallery over 700,000 images digitized from the The New York Public Library's vast collections, including manuscripts, maps, vintage posters, rare prints, and photographs
  • C-SPAN Video Library free access to all C-SPAN programmes since 1987. Look for TV documentaries on American politic
   2016