The following work has been undertaken since 1 September 2025:
Items added to the BRS collection: primary sources
Our 2025 volume, made freely available online following payment of a Gold Open Access fee by the Society of Merchant Venturers.
Port of Bristol Authority, Port of Bristol Handbook 80 (Bristol, 1980)
An illustrated handbook / guide to the port’s services in 1980.
Tout, Herbert, The Standard of Living in Bristol (University of Bristol, 1938)
A report by the University of Bristol Social Survey.
A history of Bristol pottery. Useful as a primary source on collecting culture in late-Victorian Bristol.
A supplement to Wilkins’ 1920 biography of Edward Colston, which played an important part in furthering the debate about Colston and his legacy.
A study of Bristol’s dockworkers in the period 1916-34, produced by a Reader in Economics at the University of Bristol.
Items added to the BRS collection: Secondary works
A research paper about Brandon Hill in Bristol, epublished with the permission of Professor Constantine.
Stories
Evan T. Jones, Four Jokes on the Millerd Map (8 December 2025)
Digitised images: topographic illustrations
High resolution digitisation and electronic publication of James Millerd’s 1671 map of Bristol and his 1673 prospect of the city.
James Millerd, An Exact Delineation of the Famous Cittie of Bristoll and Suburbs (Bristol, 1671)
James Millerd, The Citty of Bristoll (Bristol, 1673)
Both were digitised and epublished in collaboration with Special Collections, University of Bristol Library. Links to c. 60 detail photographs can be found on our webpage: Digitised Images.
Wikimedia / Wikipedia
In addition to the Millerd images discussed above, a number of other images were added to Wikimedia, including recent maps of the early modern parish and ward boundaries, reproduced with permission of the illustrator, Penny Copeland.
About twelve Wikipedia articles that relate to the history of Bristol were updated / augmented. This included the significant expansion of the ‘History’ section of the Brandon Hill article.
Usage of BRS digital resources
From July to December 2025 the Bristol Record Society Collection on the Internet Archive received an average of 3,300 views / downloads per month. This is about 1,200 more per month than the previous period (February-June 2025). It is about double the number of monthly views we were receiving in 2024. The rapid growth in visits by humans correlates with an even greater rise in visits by bots. Since the summer, these have averaged c. 2,100 visits per month.
As discussed in the September report, it seems likely that the significant increase in both human and bot visits are related. Most of the bot visits will be a result of searches using Google and other AI-driven applications. Google, for instance, provides links to its sources from its ‘AI Overview’. It seems likely people are clicking on these links to take them to our collection, driving our human visitor numbers.
The BRS website received 1,283 views in the last 30 days from 549 individual visitors. This is higher than the previous period. The geographical distribution of our viewers is roughly the same – about two thirds from the the UK and a third from abroad (esp. N. America, Australia and western Europe). Bristol itself is less prominent (about one sixth of the total) than previously. This is not because visits from locals are falling. Rather, it suggests that our resources and activities are gaining a wider audience.
Bristol Record Society 
