Electronic resources beginning with ‘U’

Abstracts and indexing for New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal, included with a subscription to Academic Research Library.

Subscription required for full access to the 192.com search engine, which holds over 600 million records of people, businesses and places.

Search UK 2002-2007 electoral rolls, births, deaths & marriages for the period 1837 to 2004, 1861 census records, telephone directories and maps.

Payment is required to view addresses from electoral rolls but there is free access to telephone directory information.

The ARCHON Directory provides contact details for record repositories in the United Kingdom. There are also links to institutions elsewhere in the world which have substantial collections of manuscripts noted under the indexes to the UK's National Register of Archives.

This site provides links to web sites that offer on-line transcriptions of UK births, marriages, deaths and censuses. A wide range of other indexes and transcriptions are also available for most counties, these may include parish records, wills, monumental inscriptions etc.

Contains information about the population, economy, political life, history, and other aspects of each country. Has links within each article to other sites, including profiles from the UK Trade & Investment Office, which have market research and other trade-related data.

Information about how to obtain a birth certificate, a marriage certificate or a death certificate, and how to use the services at the Family Records Centre.

This site provides access to approximately 85 000 images of maps from between 1846 and 1899. There is also a County name gazetteer which lists counties as they existed around 1850. Selecting a county will present you with a gazetteer of towns and villages in that county.

The National Archives was formed in April 2003 by bringing together the Public Record Office and the Historical Manuscripts Commission. This site provides information about genealogical research in the United Kingdom, including the 1901 census, family fact sheets which provide details on tracing an ancestor, and research information leaflets. Records available online include the 1901 and 1911 Census for England and Wales, and probate wills from 1384 to 1858. Initial searches are free but charges apply for viewing records.

Over 60 different maps depicting plantations, fortifications and townships in Ireland during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I, from the ‘State Papers Ireland’ held by the National Archives in the UK.

The UK National Inventory of War Memorials (UKNIWM) is a registered charity, supported by the Imperial War Museum, working to compile a record of all war memorials in the UK and to promote their appreciation, use and preservation.

UKNIWM's website provides an on-line database that aims to cover all UK memorials commemorating all wars, ranging from familiar community crosses and statues to less common memorials like bus shelters, sundials, park benches and even an island. Currently, 55,000 UK war memorials are documented.

When the project was established in 1989 a decision was made to use the 1974 UK county boundaries (May 1975 in Scotland) which have since changed. The changes are shown at UK County Table. If you are not sure which county the memorial might be in you can search by town name.

A simple search can be done by keyword, place or building name, war and type (of memorial). An advanced search also allows searching by UKNIWM reference number, City/Town/Village, country, street, inscription words, denomination and craftsman.

Searchable headings under 'war' are as follows: Any; 9th to 20th century minor wars; Aden (20C); Afghanistan (19, 20 & 21C); American Civil War; American Revolution; Animal memorials; Ashanti War; Austrian Succession; Bannockburn Campaign; Battle of Hastings; Battle of Waterloo; Berlin Airlift; Blessed Village; Boxer Rebellion 1900; Burma (19C); China (19C); Colonial India; Crimean War; Cyprus Emergency; Egypt & the Sudan; English Civil War; Falklands Conflict; Far East Prisoners WW2; First World War; First WW Civilians; Former Yugoslavia; Gulf Conflict; Holocaust; Indian Mutiny; Indonesian Confrontation; Iraq (21C); Jacobite Rebellions; Kaffir Wars (19C); Korean War; League of Augsburg; Malayan Emergency; Matabele War; Monmouths Revolt; New Zealand Wars; Non-Combat Deaths; Non-Specific Conflict; Non-Specific Regimental; North America 1812; Northern Ireland; Palestine (20C); Peace & Anti-War Memorials; Revolutionary Napoleonic; Roman Occupation; Second World War; Second WW Civilians; Seven Years War; Somaliland; South African Wars; Spanish Civil War; Spanish Succession; Suez Emergency & Crisis; Terrorist Acts; Unknown; VC or GC Winners;Vietnam War; War of the Roses; Zulu Wars.

The first phase of this project does not have the resources to add many of the estimated 1.5 million names on UK memorials and enquirers are advised to contact their local UK family history society to see if they have carried out this research. For contact details check the UK's Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) website at FFHS Members.

UKNIWM project staff may carry out elementary manual memorial searches across small geographical areas but successes are not guaranteed and enquirers are asked to supply the following information : full name of the relative being sought; date of death; rank and service details, e.g. Sergeant J. Smith, Royal Warwickshire Regiment; place of birth if known and place of residence of next of kin; schools attended and place of work if relevant and known; and religion.

Also, some types of material recorded on the database are not available on-line, for example, newspaper cuttings, committee minutes, plans, drawings and images. Newspaper cuttings can be viewed at your county archive or local studies library or at the British Library Newspapers Archive at Colindale, London. See British Library Newspapers.

If you wish to view the newspaper cuttings and the images in the UKNIWM research files or apply for a manual search of memorials contact details are : UK National Inventory of War Memorials, Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ, Tel: 020 7207 9851/9863, Fax: 020 7207 9859 or send an online inquiry to Contact Us.

This website also has link to a joint Channel 4/UKNIWM project to search for the names of individual people commemorated on WW1 memorials. The project provides a WW1 names database, searchable on Channel 4's Lost Generation website, at First World War Names Search. There is also a links page to related war memorial websites and related topics at Other War Memorial Related Websites.

The UK National Maritime Museum's Caird Library has produced over 70 Reseach Guides to the Museum's collections and other sources for research into maritime history. These include guides to : (1) getting started with maritime research, family history and picture research; (2) the Royal Navy ; (3) the Merchant Navy; (4) RMS Titanic; (5) World War Two; (6) Shipping companies; (7) Passengers; (8) Lloyd's; (9) Historic photographs; (10) Women & the sea; (11) Pirates and privateers; (12) General maritime - ie: press gangs, marine environment, animals at sea, music at sea and girls at the Royal Hospital School in Greenwich; (13) Horatio Nelson & James Cook; (14) charts, maps, atlases & pilot books: (15) famous explorers, navigators and hydrographers and specifically polar exploration; (16) flags; and (17) uniforms and medals and specifically the Victoria Cross.

Research guide G3: Passengers: Ships sailing to Australia & New Zealand (images) lists some of the Museum's photographic material (original photos, or photographs of plans, pictures or models) showing ships that have sailed to Australia and New Zealand. The list gives ship and date, type of image & negative number. More information may be found using the Picture Library's online catalogues.

The Prints and Drawings online catalogue can be searched by vessel and so far has 500 images from the Museum's collection of over 60,000 items, of which 30,000 are drawings, watercolours and sketchbook sheets. The Historic Photograph Online Database covers 270,000 negatives, including glass, nitrate and safety film negatives, one million prints and 1463 albums, dating from 1840. As this is a negative-based catalogue, the images are not available to view online. You can narrow your search using the following categories:Warships; Merchant ships; Sailing vessels;Topographical (places); People; & Miscellaneous.

The Collections Online Website provides 12,000 images from the Museum's collection of over 2 million objects, which includes astronomical and navigational instruments, 100,000 charts and maps, coins and medals, decorative art, fine art (including 1360 oil paintings), some 1000 flags, 3200 ship models, timekeeping instruments, uniforms and weapons.

Ancestors on Board is a Findmypast.com database produced in association with the UK National Archives. It contains outward passenger lists from the National Archives BT27 record series, covering long-distance voyages leaving the British Isles from 1890 to 1960.You need to subscribe to access full records and, currently, digitised records are available up to 1949.

You can search for records of individuals or groups of people leaving for destinations including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA and featuring ports such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. While these countries feature strongly, all continents are covered and you will find passengers on ships sailing to all parts of Asia, the Caribbean, South America and West Africa, even to remotest oceanic islands such as South Georgia Island.

These voyages often called en route at additional ports, including those in Europe, and any passengers disembarking at these stops are included. Voyages from all British (English, Welsh and Scottish) ports, and from all Irish ports before partition in 1921 and all Northern Irish ports after partition, are covered.

A large proportion of the passengers are of course British emigrants. Prior to WW1, there was mass migration by boat. An estimated 125,000 British people emigrated to USA, 50,000 to Canada and 25,000 to Australia every year between 1890 and 1914. After WW1, emigration continued but became increasingly controlled and often had a changed emphasis: for instance, Australia became a more and more popular destination.

Records do not cover British emigrants alone. Many European trans-migrants are included. These people, many of whom were economic migrants, began their journeys in continental Europe and came to Britain to catch a cheaper sailing to their final destination such as USA.

There were also numerous business travellers (who may appear many times in BT27, once for each journey, if they made regular trips to and from, say, USA), civil servants and diplomats travelling on official government business, and leisure travellers visiting family overseas or simply embarking on pleasure cruises.

Passenger lists vary in size and in length, they changed over time, and different shipping lines had their own pre-printed forms. Some are typed, others are handwritten; some record only a minimum of detail about the passengers, others include a wealth of information down to exact address and ultimate destination overseas.

This database does not include domestic British or purely European voyages, lists for Merchant or Royal Naval vessels or troop ships, nor incoming voyages to Britain. Incoming voyages are contained within the UK National Archives BT26 record series, which has not yet been digitised and no name index exists for passengers. However, voyages indexed by ship name are being added to the National Archives online catalogue.

This site provides a searchable database to bills, Hansard, select committee reports and more, from the United Kingdom.

A selective archive of significant British websites.

Provides computerised access to Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory, Irregular Serials and Annuals. More than 100,000 serials are indexed and can be accessed by title, publisher and ISSN.

A portal site for information on the sustainable development of the oceans. Covers history, biology, maps, statistics and research, climatology and ecology; economic uses of the oceans; and issues from food security and climate change to governance and human health.

Contains bibliographic citations to UN documents and publications originating from UN bodies world wide. The database also contains bibliographic citations to monographs, serials, journal articles and publications of governments, international organisations, commercial publishers and other non-UN sources acquired by the Dag Hammarskjold Library or the Library of the UN Office at Geneva.

Since 1999 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has administered money transferred to the Commonwealth from unclaimed bank accounts, life insurance policies, and shares in companies. This ASIC website includes the Treasury publication Do we have any of your money?, listing money transferred from bank accounts which have not been used for seven years. The years from 1989 to 1999 are available to search online. Also on this site, the ASIC gazette lists unclaimed money transferred since 1999.

Free educational website, teaching the science and history of evolutionary biology.Includes featured articles and browse by topic.

A gateway to archives around the world. Search by country, region, keyword, and type of archive, such as national, regional, university, business and labour, military, parliamentary, religious, family, architectural, women, and literature and arts.

Contains country profiles, statistical tables, databases and working papers relating to education, culture and communication in United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) countries. Statistics in country profiles include literacy rates, participation in education, cinema attendance and expenditure on research and development.

This site contains documents of UNESCO governing bodies such as the General Conference and Executive Board; reports and documents of UNESCO meetings and conferences; speeches of the Director-General; and the UNESCO Courier and UNESCO Sources monthly magazines.

A searchable list of union songs world wide, including Australian content. The site contains music files, scores and song history.

A searchable list of union songs world wide, including Australian content. The site contains music files, scores and song history.

Official website of Unitarian Universalism a new religion founded in 1961

from a union of the Unitarian and Universalist religious movements in America. Provides a history of the movement, statement of principles and online resources for visitors, members and leaders who would like to know more.

This is the official site of the United Nations (UN). It includes general information about the UN and access to subject databases for UN publications.

ODS is a full text database covering all types of official United Nations documentation, beginning in 1993. In addition, older UN documents are being added to the system on a daily basis. ODS also provides access to the resolutions of the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council and the Trusteeship Council from 1946 onwards.

This online database contains all United Nations parliamentary documents including resolutions and decisions issued at the UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva. It also includes documents from a number of UN agencies such as United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

This online database contains five categories of treaty related documents. They are the Status of Multicultural Treaties Deposited with the Secretary- General, the United Nations Treaty Series, the texts of recently deposited Multilateral Treaties, photographs of Treaty Signature Ceremonies and Titles of the Multilateral Treaties Deposited with the Secretary- General in the UN official languages.

This site provides access to the United Nations Treaty Series (UNTS) and multilateral treaties deposited with the Secretary General. Registration is required to access these documents. Some content is subscription-only and can be accessed at the State Library of NSW.

This site provides information from the 2000 United States Census.

This site provides searchable databases of US Government publications. It includes the current United States Government manual.

Information on Patents, Trademarks, Copyright and other Intellectual Property options.

This site provides a search engine to locate a postcode for any American city or town. Reverse searching by postcode is also available.

This site provides a database which converts currencies.

This site provides a database which converts currencies.

This site provides information about undergraduate courses offered by the participating universities, how to apply, study costs and key dates.

Searchable database of universities around the world.

This site provides a comprehensive gateway to US and international government information.

This database contains a selection of unreported judgments from a the High Court, Federal Court, and the Supreme Courts of the ACT, NSW, NT, Qld, SA, Tas, Vic, WA.

Contains copies of unreported decisions of the Supreme Court of NSW, Court of Appeal NSW and Court of Criminal Appeal NSW.

This site provides information from the US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract including statistics in brief, frequently requested tables, state rankings and state and county profiles. The site also contains statistical tables in PDF format which require Adobe Acrobat to view them.

Fact sheets on the world's countries, provided by the US Department of State. Contains current statistical and demographic data, and briefings on the country's recent history.

This site provides a database of information about places in the USA. The database can be searched by place name, state and zip code and provides information such as location and population as well as links to maps of the area and census data about the place.

Search burial locations in US Department of Veterans Affairs' national cemeteries.

Compiled by Nicholas Vine Hall and published in 2006, this CDROM contains some 10,839 entries and is national in coverage. It concentrates on sailing vessels of the 18th and 19th centuries that brought immigrants to America from the Old World. It is an index to the location of the images and DOES NOT CONTAIN pictures of the vessels. Compilation took 10 years to complete.

Details given include name of vessel, rig, build year, tonnage, masts, funnels, name of master, ports sailed between, port belonging to, place of build and date lost or broken up. Not all entries have all of these details shown. Merchant and naval vessels are included.