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Open Book Publishers

Open Book Publishers are the leading independent Open Access publisher in the Humanities and Social Sciences in the UK: a not-for-profit Social Enterprise run by scholars who are committed to making high-quality research freely available to readers around the world. Their site currently offers 173 EBooks that cover a broad range of subjects.

Link for access.

Emergency Library

The Internet Archive is making the 1.4 million books in its lending library available for free worldwide as digital books via Open Library!

All you need to do is set up an account and you can access up to 10 books online at a time and read them on devices.

Whether you need textbooks, classic literature, genre fiction or just a good read, it’s worth a look.You can also create and share reading lists, browse by genre and share what you’re reading on social media.

Link for access.

University of Michigan Publishers has made their digital and ebook collection free and accessible to all. It specialises in humanities and social sciences but covers many other academic disciplines. Resources focus on subjects including:

  • History
  • Politics
  • Drama
  • Law
  • Sociology
  • Literature
  • Media Studies
  • Classics
  • Religion
  • Jazz
  • Environmental Studies
  • Business and Economics
  • Art

This is currently available until 30th June 2020.

Link for access.

Free online access to all of their Press Journals.This includes full access to online journals including

  • Case Studies in the Environment
  • Civic Sociology
  • Classical Antiquity
  • Collabra: Psychology
  • Feminist Media Histories: An International Journal
  • Film Quarterly
  • Journal of Medieval Worlds
  • The Journal of Musicology
  • New Criminal Law Review
  • Nineteenth-Century Literature
  • Sociology of Development
  • Studies in Late Antiquity

This is currently available until June 2020.

Link for access.

Soundtrap let’s you record instruments, vocals and use loops to make music anywhere.


Soundtrap for Education is a cloud-based platform that enables students to create music or podcasts. With Soundtrap, students can collaborate on projects using an extensive collection of quality loops, effects, and software instruments from anywhere in the world pretty much on any device. It also integrates with Google Classroom for effortless collaboration.

It’s worth noting that Students can’t sign up for this without a teacher already signing up beforehand. There is a free trial available for teachers and after that there is reduced pricing available for education.

For example, start a new song using all the built in professional loops and software instruments on your tablet when on the bus, continue on your Chromebook when arriving at home, invite a couple of friends, who are working on Mac and Windows devices, and conduct a video chat from within the studio coming up with the bass line for the song and finally find a didgeridoo player in the Soundtrap community laying down a unique ending of the song; you are all working in the same project seeing and hearing all the changes. It’s like Google Docs, but for music production!

Steps for Getting Started with Soundtrap

Step 1:  Create a free school trial account at www.soundtrap.com/edu 

  • Select ‘Start as a Teacher’ to set up your trial account
  • All new trial accounts will get free access to Soundtrap for Education until the end of the term/semester (during the COVID-19 closures)
  • All trial accounts will be given 500 seats by default

Step 2: Invite others or roster students with one of the following methods:

  • Google Classroom integration, click here for instructions
  • Invite by group code, click here for instructions

Congratulations! You have registered your users on Soundtrap!

Step 3: Start incorporating Soundtrap into your classes! 

Step 4: The following are essential skills to review:

Step 5: Support and Community

BBC iPlayer lets you watch BBC content from your computer, Smart TV or mobile device.


BBC iPlayer isn’t just for catching up on last night’s Eastenders or rewatching Gavin & Stacey for the 17th time, you can also find a lot of educational material in its depths. You can watch the latest episodes of QI to learn more quirky facts about the world or explore the hundreds of episodes of Science and Nature documentaries. There’s also great comedy and entertainment shows for when you have finished your work for the day and need to relax.

David Attenborough alone can take you through Climate Change for your Science lesson research, the different ecosystems around the world for your Geography research or even the early years of making nature documentaries for Media lesson research.

Some more examples of programmes that can aid your research are below:

Criminology – Jack the Ripper

Engineering – The Limit: Trickiest Tunnel

Music – Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool

Sport – Shane Williams: Rugby, Concussion and Me

Dance – The Royal Ballet: Mayerling

Don’t forget though that some episodes are only available for a limited time and can be removed from iPlayer at any time.

You can look through all the episodes and series available for each subject on the BBC iPlayer website or click one of these categories; History, Documentaries, Science & Nature, Music.

The Conversation is a non-profit, charity, independent news outfit that sources its content from academic sources and researchers to help you keep up to date with the world away from the noise of the mainstream media. Take a look at theconversation.com.

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