Capital maps and capital crimes

Before we taste this week’s choice morsels, a reminder about an item from the last edition. In order to get all the free stuff from How To Books (a Key Link under “Advice & help”), be sure to scroll right to the bottom of the home page, and click on the words “Read How To Books Online For Free”. Now, walk back this way.

Find your way to the past

Now, what do you suppose Old London Maps is about? Could it be… oh, you’ve guessed already. Old London Maps is “committed to granting free access to scores of rare maps and images of London from the medieval period to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries”. And they are certainly living up to the commitment.

They have scanned and uploaded maps from the Thirteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries. You can see an overview of each map, and then click for a very high-resolution enlargement. I noticed that there is a prominent copyright notice on the map I looked at: they are giving us the rights to view the scanned maps online, not to reproduce and distribute them, which is fair enough. After all, they’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense to provide this service. And it doesn’t stop with maps.

There are also articles galore on old London, with some exquisite pictures, as beautifully reproduced as the maps. They have sensibly gone for a Google search box, set up so that you use the power of Google to search this particular site. I love this website, a straightforward idea brought expertly to life. First rate.

(From the Gateway to websites, select “History”. Old London Maps is under “Local history”.)


What did you do in the underworld, Granny?

While we’re in old London, how about a trip down the Old Bailey to watch a juicy murder case? Don’t fancy it? OK, perhaps you’d settle for Proceedings of the Old Bailey is described as “a fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court.” I like “non-elite”! – a rather nice way of describing the assorted rig raff who passed through the Old Bailey between 1674 and 1913.

Of course, the obvious game to play is “spot the dodgy ancestor”. But be careful – I found murder, wounding, grand larceny and counterfeiting. I’m rather sorry I tried it.

(From the Gateway to websites, select “History”. Proceedings of the Old Bailey is under “Local history”.)

Urgent stock check

All the staff at Treasure Hunt Towers (even the cat) like to get out and about, sampling new websites, revisiting old ones, and conveying our impressions to you, dear reader. But this week we’ve decided to stop in and examine two useful "add-ons" to our own Westminster Libraries website.

We Use Lots Of Paper

Actually we try not to use much paper, and that’s not what WULOP stands for, which is Westminster Union List of Periodicals - quite a mouthful! Don’t be daunted: WULOP is a straightforward catalogue of the newspapers, magazines and journals stocked by Westminster Libraries and Archives.

This ranges from centuries-old stuff gathering dust in a basement (sorry, cleaners) to hot-off-the-Internet publications which you can access online with your Westminster Libraries card. It’s a researcher’s dream - you can trace wars, peaceful pursuits, fashions and financial crises through the centuries and up to now. And you don’t have to wear funny specs and a holey cardie to be a researcher - if you’re "growing" your family tree, the press in its many forms can provide great background. Unless your relatives were famous or notorious, in which case you might be able to fill in the foreground as well!

WULOP says what’s available and where it is. If you’re after something in print which resides in a library stack, don’t forget to check before you travel. Stuff happens, and it’s a pity to waste a journey.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "News & magazines". WULOP is a Key Link.)

With a song in my heart (and thousands more on paper)

And now for something completely different. And a bit the same. The Song Index is a new venture from Westminster Music Library. They figured that prospective songsters in search of sheet music might want to check what’s available without leaving their music stands. The Music Library has over 75,000 songs in sheet music form, including popular, jazz and folk songs, songs from musicals and films, classical songs and opera arias.

What they’ve done is to go through their huge collection of anthologies, noting down each individual song to be included in the Song Index. Presumably, now they’ve finished, they can stop counting and do a bit more singing!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Music". Westminster Music Library is a Key Link, and there’s also a direct link to the Song Index.)

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Who needs advice?

I prefer my advice from the hip – no messing, tell me what to do and why. These two websites pass the test.

How to… where to…

Including How To Books on the Gateway was a tricky proposition. Where to put it? The scope of these guides, every word of which seems to be available free online, is mind-boggling. The home page mentions these broad categories: business, employment, property, living abroad, family and leisure. So that’s enough to justify putting it into at least six Gateway categories – dig down and it gets worse… I mean better… oh, read on!

Take "family" for instance. The guides under this heading range from buying stocks and shares to coping when someone dies, taking in debt management and the menopause on the way. So we can feel the width, what about the quality?
It’s good, very good. In clear, uncluttered prose, the guides give sound advice – the sort of commonsense advice that might leave you thinking that you could have worked it out for yourself, given enough time. Don’t take the time – read the guide and feel the benefit.

Two quibbles about the set-up of the website. To reach the free online content, you have to scroll right to the bottom of the home page (not surprising, really, that the rest of the page is about trying to sell a few of the guides in print form). Secondly, you may find you have to "tease out" the full text. It’s divided into separate bits, and it’s not always obvious that there’s more. Look out for the menus and breadcrumb trails. And let’s not be too churlish about these drawbacks – we’re getting a shedload of top quality free stuff here.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Advice & help" – yes, that’s our compromise choice for a billet. How To Books is a Key Link.)

But can you eat it?

How long will your favourite food or drink stay safe and tasty? What’s the best way to store it? Simple – but vital – questions, simply answered by StillTasty. Fruit, veg, bread, meat… whatever you’ve got in the fridge or the food cupboard, this website will tell you whether it’s festering or fine, long-lasting or lethal.

This is an American site, a point I make only because some names for foodstuffs vary from what we’re used to. Its benchmark is the recommendations of the US Food & Drug Administration, but there’s no stuffy bureaucratic preaching here, just clear advice that even I could understand. Now I even know where to stick my bread (so I don’t need suggestions!).

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Home & garden". StillTasty is under "Food & drink".)

Saving the planet can be fun (honest!)

I’m a bit of a dinosaur (pauses for agreement from colleagues). I find a lot of the current eco-babble a bit hard to take. On the other hand, even I realise that I waste a lot of stuff, and sometimes hop on a bus when I could easily walk. So this week’s WTH is about doing your bit for green-ness without unnecessary suffering.

Stroll on!

It’s been a while since I had a look at walkit.com, and I must say it’s brightened up a lot in the meanwhile. The pitch is that they will help you find a walking route between places in London, or in 12 other UK towns and cities. If you’re in a hurry, they’ll find you the most direct route, but you can choose to sidle down the back streets avoiding the worst of the traffic noise, or to find a route which minimises the amount of carbon dioxide you inhale.

I wasn’t sure what the difference was between the "less busy" and "less pollution" options, so I asked for routes between Baker Street Station and Tate Modern. The direct route is… well, direct – 3.2 miles and 48 minutes if I get a wiggle on (or an hour 37 minutes if I dawdle). The "less busy" route was 3.4 miles with a few more twists and turns, but very promising as a stress-free walk. I was not surprised to find that the "less pollution" route looked remarkably similar to "less busy".

If you want to bathe in a green glow of satisfaction, you can check out the amount of CO² you are not emitting by going on foot. As for me, I’m just off for a nice walk down to the Tate!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Environment & geography". walkit.com is, I’m afraid, under "Going green".)

A bin near you

The main point about Recycling in Westminster is that it is long on facts, and admirably short on the stuff that makes you want to dump everything in the rubbish bin out of sheer bloody-mindedness. What you can what you can’t, where the recycling points are and what happens to the things you recycle… someone has had a severe attack of stick-to-we-need-to-know disease, and the resulting web pages are admirable.

Of course, if you want preachy stuff you can find it, but it’s deliciously easy to avoid it!

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Environment & geography". Recycling in Westminster is under "Going green".)