MECA Useful Links

Links to resources for finding contact information for archival repositories, online catalogue networks, resources for finding archives and digitised online resources and other heritage websites.

Contact Information

• Find an Archive This resource provides contact information such as addresses, web pages and opening hours for UK Repositories.
• Oxford College Archives This resource provides contact information and brief descriptions of Oxford College Archives.

UK Archival Network

Resources for locating Archives in the UK that provide descriptions of collections, but at varying levels of detail.

• The National Archives Discovery searches several data sets including the National Register of Archives and also Access to Archives which consists of descriptions of archives in English Repositories.
• AIM25 Archives in London and the M25 area
• Archives Hub covers University and College Repositories
• Scottish Archive Network (SCAN) covers Scottish Repositories
• Archives Wales covers Welsh Repositories

Other Resources for locating Archives

• Film Archives UK
• British Universities Film and Video Council
• Colonial Film UK Catalogue of moving images of the British Empire, which includes some material for Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Aden and Sudan. The catalogue provides a description of the material and details as to which Archive the film is held in. It also has some films available online, including a recruitment film for the Palestine Police.
• Directory of Archives focused on Bahrain and the Gulf (compiled in Mawane).
• Israel Archives and Information Association (Hebrew website)
• Directory of UK Map Collections
• Modern Sudan Collective – list of archives related to the built environment in Sudan.

Other UK Archive Repositories with Middle East material

Please note that the following list is not comprehensive.

• Bristol Archives holds the collection that was formerly part of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum.
• Egypt Exploration Society has a focus on archaeology.
• Exeter University Special Collections has substantial collections for the Middle East, including the Arab World Documentation Unit and the Gulf Collection. It also has a Digital Archive of the Middle East.
• Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives has much Middle East related material.
• Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology
• Palestine Exploration Fund
• Pitt Rivers Museum has extensive photographic collections relating to the Middle East. See for example the Thesiger Collection.
• Imperial War Museum has extensive papers and photographs of soldiers who served in the Middle East.
• Weston Library now houses the Rhodes House Library Collections. Although the focus of the Rhodes House material is on Africa, it does hold some Middle East related material, especially for the Palestine Mandate. For example, they hold the Sir John Chancellor papers.
• Royal Geographical Society has the papers and photographs of many explorers who travelled in the Middle East and it has an extensive online Picture Library.
• School of Oriental and African Studies SOAS Library SOAS has extensive missionary collections.
• St Peter’s College, Oxford has the Claude Hope Sutton Papers. Claude Hope Sutton served in the chaplaincy for the Church Missionary Society (CMS) at Luxor in Egypt in 1888 and then in the first half of 1889 visited the CMS missions in Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. His papers include diaries and correspondence.
• Sudan Archive, Durham University

Digitised Online Resources and other heritage websites

• Archives Direct has digitised documents from The National Archives at Kew. In the advanced search you can limit searches to ‘Confidential Print – Middle East’.
• Gertrude Bell Project at the University of Newcastle.
• British Diplomatic Oral History Programme (Churchill Archives) contains online transcripts of oral history interviews.
• British Forces in Palestine is a website dedicated to British veterans who served in Palestine.
• British Newspaper Archive contains over 3 million fully searchable pages, featuring more than 200 newspaper titles from the UK and Ireland that have been digitised by the British Library.
• British Palestine Police Association is the successor organisation to the Palestine Police Old Comrades Association.
• Chehab Collection – Emir Farid Chehab Collection at the Wilson Centre Digital Archive.
• Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) at Exeter University consists of digitised material of selected parts of the University’s collections of material from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
• 55 Field Surgical Team RAMC is a website chronicling some of the activities of the 55 Field Surgical Team in Oman, as well as the experiences of others who served in Dhofar in the 1970s.
• Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) is available from the University of Wisconsin. FRUS is an official historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions which have been declassified and edited for publication.
• General John Graham Interview relating to the 1970 coup in Oman.
• Harold Hindle James has digitised papers relating to Harold Hindle James’ life and service in Egypt 1920s-1960s including a typescript account of James’s visit to Saudi Arabia, March 1937, as a guest of H.E. Sheik Hafiz Wahba, Saudi Arabian Minister in London.
• Historical Palestinian Newspaper Collection holds early Palestinian Newspapers Collection at Givat Haviva – Peace Library, contains some online copies of Falastin.
• King-Crane Commission has digitised online records from the King-Crane Commission, which gathered information on the wishes of the peoples living in former Ottoman territories in the Middle East in the summer of 1919.
• Levantine Heritage Foundation covers history and information about the Levantine community, discussion forum and meeting point for descendants.
• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs is an online searchable database of images, which contains many images from the Middle East.
• Look and Learn Historical Image Archive has free historical pictures and photos from public collections.
• The Wartime Memories Project contains oral history, photos, personal stories and memories of the First and Second World Wars. See records relating to the WW2 Palestine Campaign.
• New York Public Library Digital Collections – the search term Middle East will reveal many illustrations from books, as well as photographs of the Holy Land, Lebanon and Jordan.
• Nomads In Oman is an online resource for the study of nomadic life in Oman.
• Palestine Post 1932-1950 is a digitised version of the newspaper which is searchable.
• Palestine Poster Project Archives is a website with a large online collection of Palestine posters from 1897 onwards.
• A Palestinian Adventure is the diaries of Ronald Baldwin, British Constable in the Palestine Police Force from 1946 to the termination of the British Mandate in 1948 presented as blog entries.
• The Middle East 1916 – 2001: A Documentary Record is part of The Avalon Project at Yale Law School and includes documents such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate and UN Security Council Resolutions.
• President Gamal Abd El Nasser has documents, photographs and audio visual material relating to President Nasser.
• Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) is a digital archive that focuses on Western interactions with the Middle East, particularly travels to Egypt during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It includes travel guides, travel narratives, photographs and drawings as well as historical maps.
• 3rd Battalion Parachute Regiment Palestine 1945-1948 includes photographs and information relating to reunions of veterans.