Miscellaneous Resources
Free open/easy access online resources for various interests that I want to share with people. My list of anime drawing resources can be found here.
Botany
Wildflowerfinder UK - Detailed website that allows you to search/identify wildflowers from the United Kingdom.
Nativeflower - Another site for native flowering plants of the United Kingdom. Contains helpful pictures and diagrams about the structure of particular flowers of ease of identification.
US Wildflowers - Detailed American wildflower database that allows you to search by state. Plenty of pictures.
USDA Wildflower Links - Page run by US Forest Service with links to a ton of sites dealing with native American flowers. Several of the linked sites are state specific.
Flower Database - Database of flowers with a feature to search for flowers associated with particular birth months. This website is also available in Japanese and Chinese.
Glossary of Botanical Terms - Glossary of botanical terminology run by The Western Australian Herbarium.
History & Literature
The Victorian Web - Longstanding academic website about all things victorian. Tons of good, in depth articles.
At The Circulating Library - Victorian fiction database with over 24,000 titles. Has a feature that allows you to search by genre and find digitized copies of texts online.
Historic Boy's Clothing - Website covering (western) historical boy's clothing with plenty of pictures. The articles have some typos but the information is accurate.
Boy's School Uniforms (archived) - Website covering the history of boy's school uniforms in the United Kingdom specifically. Now only accessible via the Wayback Machine but most of the pictures still work.
HathiTrust - Website with digitized copies of 1000s of public domain books.
Redeeming Qualities - Blog that reviews obscure public domain popular fiction. Last updated in December of 2023 so (probably) still being maintained.
The Project Gutenberg Project - Similar to Redeeming Qualities in that it's a blog focused on obscure public domain books, but the reviews here are submitted by various different bloggers. Last updated in 2017 so it's pretty safe to say that they're no longer active but their backlog is large.
Medieval and Modern Bestiary - Joint blog project run by a medievalist and an artist covering monsters from the middle ages. Cool illustrations.
The Beastiary - Another site that covers medieval depictions of animals as well as mythological creatures from medieval manuscripts. Very in depth with lots of pictures.
Antique Spectacles (archived) - An interesting site that covers the history of glasses and other vision aids. Lots of pages and pictures.
Music
I've Sound Explorer - Fanmade Japanese I've Sound song and artist database. The most recent update appears to have been in 2021 but the information up to that point is good.
I've Sound International - English language I've Sound fansite. Up to date as of being added to this page.
I've no Kashi - Blog with English translated and Romaji lyrics for some I've Sound songs, mostly more recent ones. Last updated in 2021 so I'm not sure if they're still active.
Anime Lyrics - Site with Japanese, Romaji and English translated lyrics for anime, video game, vocaloid and j-pop songs (particularly ones from the 00s). Has a feature that allows you to get the definitions of kanji characters in lyrics.
Hatsune Miku Atwiki - Very comprehensive Japanese language vocaloid wiki.
Books
Nonfiction & reference books about various subjects. You need a (free) Internet Archive account to digitally borrow and read these books
The History Of The Snowman by Bob Eckstein - A humorously written yet accurate and informative investigation into the history of one of the worlds most ubiquitous cultural icons, the snowman. Published in 2007 but the information is still accurate.
Happiest days : The Public Schools In English Fiction by Jeffrey Richards - Book about the depiction of 'public' (endowed) schools in English fiction, primarily in the 19th and first half of the 20th century. Goes in depth about complex historical and cultural factors but still easy to comprehend as far as books about literature go.
The Heirs Of Tom Brown : The English School Story by Isabel Quigly - Another books covering the English school story as a literary genre focusing on its development, rise, and eventual decline by examining particular 'strains' within school stories over the 19th and first half of the 20th century.