Open art resources

Contents

• About this list
• Graphic arts
• History
• Language and linguistics
• Library catalogues (UK public)
• Literature
• Independent media
  • Darknet
  • Email
  • Hosting
  • Politics
  • Usenet
  • Web proxies
• Mainstream media
  • Audio streams
  • News media
  • Radio
  • Video streams
• Music
  • Gregorian chant
  • Instruments
  • Musicology, music science, and composers
  • Music scores
• Religion
• Transport and travel
  • Aviation
  • Hotels
  • Maps
  • Maritime
  • Railways
    • Heritage operating companies
    • Heritage tours
    • History
    • Operating companies (UK)
    • Operating companies (Europe)
    • Railcams
    • Timetables and travel advice
    • User groups

About this list

Unless described otherwise, everything listed here is available free and without registration. Profit-making organisations are not listed unless they provide a significant open content. Note that sites may move or disappear without warning, and that commercial media streams in particular may be geographically restricted.

This is a permanent work in progress. Suggestions for worthy additions are welcome to <hils> <at> <newearth.demon.co.uk>

Graphic arts

• Google Art Project
• The National Gallery (UK). A nice "explore the paintings" option.
• The National Portrait Gallery (UK)
• Open Font Library
• Ubuntu Font Family

History

• Ostia. The harbour city of ancient Rome.

Language and linguistics

• The Free Dictionary
• Google Translate. Translation engine.
• SDL FreeTranslation.com. Translation engine.
• VoxForge. A project to collect transcribed speech for use with free and open source speech recognition engines.
• Yahoo! Babel Fish. Translation engine. 150 word limit.

Library catalogues (UK public)

• Birmingham
• Cardiff
• Cornwall
• Devon
• Gloucestershire
• Herefordshire
• Libraries West (Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset, Somerset, and South Gloucestershire)
• Newport
• Nottinghamshire and Nottingham
• Oxfordshire
• Shropshire
• Southampton
• Worcesterhire

Literature

• www.archive.org is a very large collection mostly of books which can be browsed online or downloaded. It also includes a number of audio files.
• Early Christian Writings
• Read book online. Novels, short stories, poems, essays, plays, etc.

Poetry

• John Cooper Clarke
• The Ivor Gurney Society
• PoemHunter.Com

Independent media

Darknet

• The Freenet Project
• The Free Haven Project. "Aims to deploy a system for distributed, anonymous, persistent data storage."
• GnuPG
• Hiding Your IP Address
• HTTPTunnel v1.2.1. HTTP/SOCKS tunnel client (Perl or Win32 binary) and server (PHP or Win32 binary).
• I2P. A secure, autonomous, near-anonymous network.
• Mailinator. Instant, disposable emails.
• Metasploit Decloaking Engine. Primarily intended for testing TOR installations.
• Proxy. Windoze software.
• Quicksilver. A Win32 Mixmaster Anonymous Remailer Client

Email

• Banasplit. Remailer and mail2news gateway
• How to send an anonyous email message
• Anonymous remailers
• Reviews of free email services
• Zoho Mail. Personal and business email.

Hosting

• FreeHostsFinder. Reviews of free web/file/image hosting.

Politics

• Aangirfan. Long-running, more or less anti-Zionist blog.
• Bent lawyers and cops
• Common Dreams. US-based "progressive" news and discussion board.
• Electoral Commission
• The Globalist Agenda
• NOTA
• Naked Capitalism. Yves Smith's blog.
• Rolling Stone
• War in Context. Paul Woodward's compendium.

Usenet

• Aioe.org (nntp.aioe.org, news.aioe.org)
• Anonymouse. Send anonymised Usenet articles. Delayed by up to 12 hours.
• Derkeiler usenet archives
• Free usenet news servers. Annotated list of free and public NNTP servers.
• Just4Today.net (news.just4today.net)
• news.ett.com.ua (reader.news.ett.com.ua port:119)
• Remailer Reliability Stats [Mixmin Pinger]
• Usenet Tools news server list

Web proxies

• Public proxy servers

Mainstream media

Audio streams

• BBC local radio streams (list)
• BBC radio 5
• BBC radio 5 live sports extra. Only active during major sports events.
• BBC World Service
• BBC World Service English news channel
• FreeBaseballRadio.com. Links to audio coverage of US MLB games.
• FreeFootballRadio.com. Links to audio coverage of US NFL games.
• Mike's Radio World. Links to over 5,000 internet radio streams.
• Talk Radio Europe

News media

• Al Jazeera
• BBC
• Channel 4 News
• Christian Science Monitor
• CNN
• Democracy Now!
• Energy Bulletin
• Euronews
• Foreign Policy
• The Guardian
• The Independent
• The Local. Sweden's news in English.
• Morning Star
• The New York Times
• The Observer
• El Pais (English pages)
• PressTV
• Private Eye
• The Register
• RT
• Talk Radio Europe
• The Telegraph
• The Washington Post

Radio

• HFCC. HF broadcasting schedules etc.
• Shortwave frequency schedule. Includes a world map with terminator.

Video streams

• ATDHE. Live sport streams
• dishtvlive. Unofficial stream which usually carries Star Cricket.
• ILM TV
• MyPremium TV
• Wiziwig. Forum announcing short-notice, temporary shared streams, mostly for live sports. Its original domain myp2p.eu is now defunct. Beware of imitators.

Music

Gregorian chant

• Global chant database. Melodies and Texts of Gregorian Chant.

Instruments

Flute vendors UK

• All flutes plus
• Jonathan Myall (Croydon)
• Trevor Jones brass and woodwind (Bristol)
• John Packer (Taunton)
• Sheehan's of Leicester. Doesn't appear to sell Muramatsu.

Flute vendors US

• J L Smith & Co

Recorders

• Dolmetsch

Musicology, music science, and composers

• Bach Cantatas. Historical background, scores and audio clips of Bach's cantatas.
• The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. "A listener and student guide by Julian Mincham".
• Gustav Holst.
• Music acoustics. From the University of New South Wales.
• The National Pipe Organ Register. By the British Institute of Organ Studies at the Royal College of Music.
• Carl Reinecke
• The Peter Warlock Society

Music scores

• Bach Gesellschaft Ausgabe. The classic late 19th and early 20th century scholarly edition of almost all of Bach's music in DjVu format.
• Beethoven-Haus Bonn Includes digital versions of manuscripts, first editions, etc.
• Boijes collection. This collection of guitar music is a major part of material digitised so far by the Music Library of Sweden.
• BSB
• Classic scores
• Clio and Euterpe online
• CPDL. Choral music. Includes some nice modern performing editions.
• Danish National Digital Sheet Music Archive
• dLibra. Digital Library in Poland
• ENCORE! The British Union Catalogue of Performance Music Sets. Catalogue only.
• Gallica digital library. Part of the BnF.
• Grupo Vocal. Music for solo voices, mostly early to renaissance.
• The Henselt Library at European-American University. Nineteenth-century piano music.
• Hofmeister XIX. A database of music published 1829-1900.
• IMSLP. A huge library of out-of-copyright music scores. Includes forums and links to similar resources. Donations of further music are encouraged, for which knowledge of scanners and image processing software is more or less essential. Update page. List of other music score websites. Alternative links bypassing DNS: front page, updates.
• University of Jena
• Edition Kainhofer. Publisher's on-the-fly score sheet generator.
• Music manuscripts online from the Morgan Library & Museum. Flash viewer only, no official download function.
• The Mutopia Project. LilyPond source code for a range of solo and ensemble pieces. Currently moribund.
• Neue Mozart Ausgabe digital edition (for personal use only)
• Piae Cantiones. A digital facsimile which appears to be incomplete, and the source of other digital editions. Mats Lillhannus has published many of the songs in modern notation.
• Piano transcriptions by Fredric Dannen & friends. Jazz transcriptions and Beatles arrangements.
• Schubert Autographs
• The Sheetmusic Warehouse. "The UK's leading supplier of original out of print sheet music." Seems to be mostly music hall songs.
• Sibley Music Library
• SLUB Dresden
• Werner Icking Music Archive

Religion

• Interfaith.org. Religious texts (including biblical apocrypha)
• Original Bible Project. James Tabor's fascinating translation of the Book of Genesis.
• Ship of Fools. An endearingly self-deprecating website for Christians "who prefer their religion disorganized". Mystery worshipper reports and web forums.

Transport and travel

Aviation

• Flights from Bristol Airport
• Flightradar24. Live air traffic maps. Very script-dependent, but nice maps.
• NATS aeronautical information service

Hotels

• Hotels Combined. Hotel prices and comparisons.

Maps

• OpenStreetMap. "The Free Wiki World Map".
• SABRE. The Society for All British and Irish Road Enthusiasts. Includes historic maps.

Maritime

• Bristol Port Company shipping information
• MarineTraffic.com. Live world ships map.
• Solent radio and ship tracking. Live (slightly delayed) maritime radio of Southampton VTS and Portsmouth QHM on Ch 11 and 12 and Solent Coastguard and Port Operations and maps of ships near Southampton and Portsmouth.

Railways

Heritage operating companies

• Avon Valley Railway
• Bodmin and Wenford Railway
• Dean Forest Railway
• Didcot Railway Centre
• East Somerset Railway
• Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway
• Heritage Railway Association. Includes a map showing (as far as I can tell) all of the heritage railways of Britain and Ireland.
• Setesdalsbanen. Grovane to Royknes, Norway. Regular services run Sundays June to August, plus charters.
• Severn Valley Railway
• South Devon Railway
• West Somerset Railway. The official site.
• West Somerset Railway. An unofficial site.

Heritage tours

• Pathfinder Tours
• Railtour Info 2012. Diesel railtours.
• Spitfire Railtours
• UK mainline steam loco movements 2012
• UK mainline steam rail tours 2012

History

• The Bristol Railway Archive. Wiki-style archive mostly of photographs of railways in and around Bristol, with a forum for chat, news, sightings, etc.
• British railway paperwork. Joyce Whitchurch's collection of links to railway documents old and new.
• Colonel Stephens Society
• Disused stations in the UK. A very large but nevertheless incomplete collection of photographs and histories of closed railway stations in the UK.
• The Great Western Archive. Photographs, drawings, articles, and data about the GWR.
• North Wales Coast Railway. Charlie Hulme's excellent site "devoted to all things relating to the railways of North Wales".
• Railway Signs and Signals of Great Britain
• Railways Archive. British railways documents.
• The Siding. British railway photographs, mostly by Frank Cox.
• The signal box. A comprehensive guide to railway signalling.
• Signalling Record Society. "The Society maintains and shares knowledge of Railway Signalling and Operation in the British Isles and Overseas."
• The Somerset and Dorset Railway Trust
• Tokyo Railway Labyrinth. Introduction to railways in the Tokyo metropolitan area.
• Trainspots. Railway photography locations in the UK. Not all details for all locationsare up-to-date.
• Warwickshire Railways. Mike Musson's remarkable archive on the railways of Warwickshire.
• Wikipedia: UK railway stations
• WNXX. Withdrawn & Stored Locomotives in the UK.

Operating companies (UK)

• Arriva Trains Wales
• Chiltern Railways
• Cross Country Trains
• First Great Western
• South West Trains

Operating companies (Europe)

• Deutsche Bahn (Germany)
• NS (Netherlands)
• NSB (Norway)
• OEBB (Austria)
• RENFE (Spain)
• SBB (Switzerland)
• SJ (Sweden)
• SNCB (Belgium)
• SNCF (France)
• Trenitalia (Italy)
• VR (Finland)

Railcams

• Grovane, Norway. Refreshes every minute, with (until a recent redesign) times of the the next heritage and passing mainline passenger trains. There's also a high-bandwidth direct video feed.
• Leipzig, Germany. Station entrance with trams etc.
• Centerville, California, USA
• Kleine Scheidegg, Switzerland
• Barking, east London, UK. By the Tilbury loop line. Mostly Electrostars with occasional freight but good quality video and audio. All day M-F.
• Cramlington, Northumberland, UK. Just north of Newcastle on the ECML. Not available 24/7, but there are plenty of birds to be heard between trains.
• Euxton, Lancashire, UK. 24/7 stream from a village between Wigan and Preston on the the WCML with infrared illumination at night. Local, long-distance, sleeper, mail and freight trains. Audio quality is very variable.

Timetables and travel advice

• Accessible UK Train Timetables
• Eurostar fares (for travel agents)
• GB rail rover guide. An independent guide to UK rover and ranger tickets.
• Live departure boards. An independent, relatively minimalist portal.
• The man in Seat 61. Extensive guidance on international rail travel.
• Network Rail. Passenger timetables in traditional format as PDF files.
• Network Rail working timetables
• Network Rail sectional appendix
• Open Train Times. Peter Hicks' in-development portal to comprehensive UK timetable data.
• PSUL. Passenger train services over unusual lines. A list of passenger trains over obscure rail routes in the British Isles.
• Rail industry data. Including raw weekly timetable data. (Registration required.)
• RailMiles mileage engine. Tom Cairns' clever calculator for UK rail routes.
• Timetables. Tom Cairns' portal to UK timetable data.
• UK National Rail

User and lobby groups

• Campaign for Better Transport. Trains pages.
• Didcot, Newbury and Southampton Railway Revival (DNSRR). Unrealistic or visionary?
• East West Rail
• Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways
• New Somerset and Dorset Railway. Visionary plan to reverse one of the worst of the 1960s closures. There's also a hideously-designed blog.
• Railfuture. "The UK's leading independent organisation campaigning for better rail services for both passengers and freight."
• Three Rivers Community Rail Partnership
• Trans Wilts Rail. Wiltshire.
• The Wye Valley Railway. History of the line from Chepstow to Monmouth, and a suggestion for reopening it.

Document history

• 2009-08-20: first draft version
• 2009-11-17: updated
• 2010-02-08: added railway section
• 2010-05-29: updated
• 2010-10-29: updated
• 2010-11-29: enlarged
• 2010-12-12: enlarged
• 2010-12-15: tidied
• 2011-01-03: enlarged
• 2011-01-07: updated
• 2011-01-29: enlarged
• 2011-03-22: enlarged
• 2011-05-13: tidied
• 2011-05-29: enlarged
• 2011-07-29: enlarged
• 2011-09-05: enlarged
• 2011-12-08: enlarged railway section
• 2012-01-23: enlarged
• 2012-04-11: Links tested after numerous minor amendments, broken links fixed.