Webwatch

Courses in police history are being offered by The Open University's International Centre for Comparative Criminological Research. The two courses are 'Police in Wartime and Citizenship', which has two modules looking at the role of the police during World War Two and their subsequent impact on modern day society, whilst 'Metropolitan Police' is a six module course using previously unavailable archive material to examine the origins and history of the force. For more details visit the Centre's website.

The Media Archive for Central England is still going strong, with regular postings to its website, including news of two future screenings: on Tuesday 3 November at 6.30pm, MACE will be at the Warwick Arts Centre in Coventry for a screening of archive film and documentaries about Coventry and Warwickshire, and on Saturday 14 November MACE will be marking Black History Month with a special screening of material at Nottingham's Central Library on Angel Row. The theme of this free event, which starts at 11.00am, is 'the black experience in the city during the 1980s' and will include television material not seen for more than twenty years, plus a day in life of Nottingham's first black Sheriff.

Fortified England is the website managed by Sue Rennie, an archaeology student living in Australia. She also publishes an online newsletter of the same name. The latest issue (September/October 2009) has a lengthy article on Lincoln Castle. She writes with enthusiasm and in a style which I find engaging. To receive her online newsletter, simply go to her website and register.

A Vision of Britain Through Time is the website created by the Great Britain Historical GIS Project ('GIS' stands for 'Geographical Information System'), which is based at Portsmouth University. It is a unique digital collection of information about Britain's localities as they have changed over time, with the information coming from census reports, historical gazetteers, travellers' tales and historic maps. It is continually adding new entries. More information about the project, and about historical applications of GIS technology, is available from the project's other website.

23 October 2009