Laoutaris explained: “I find this world of online resources is a fast-moving one, so it’s very possible that some of statistics and even a few of the web domains have changed (resources can be updated and added at the rate of thousands of documents/items per year, so some of these resources will have expanded their collections further since I wrote this). But the most up-to-date information can always be located easily with a quick search online for anyone interested.

“Naturally, many of these resources have been gathered from my own research experiences, but these can be added to for an even broader list of resources relevant to biographers working across many differing fields and periods. What I’ve tried to do here is include some of the less well-known resources, and ones which encompass material culture, art, science and archaeology etc (which is why the really obvious ones like the British Library or the National Archives aren’t on here.”