Databases
Best Bets for Africa and Black Diaspora Studies
Not sure where to begin? Try these first.
Academic Video Online provides nearly 80,000 titles spanning subjects from anthropology to zoology. Curated for curricular relevance, this streaming video database includes feature films, documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs, newsreels, and demonstrations.
Browse by Channels to see what's available by subject or source, or search by title.
Primary source material from the 18th century to the early 20th century devoted to American history, particularly strong in African American newspapers, the Civil War, Reconstruction, Women's Suffrage, and World War I. Information archived is from leading historical periodicals and books, and includes eyewitness accounts of historical events, vivid descriptions of daily life, editorial observations, commerce as seen through advertisements, and genealogical records. Databases are encyclopedic in scope and allow full Boolean, group, name, string, and truncated searches. Transcribed individual entries are complete with full bibliographic citations and are organized chronologically. Click on the "i" icon to view a full list of collections.
Documents the period of rapid colonial expansion by European powers across the African continent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Study military conflicts, political and diplomatic rivalries, exploration, Christian missions, technological advancements, slavery and encounters between European colonizers and African communities during this major period of colonial expansion. Drawing on rare printed works, diaries and journals, correspondence, maps, photographs, films and more, this is a key resource for studying the impact of European colonialism and imperialist regimes on the people and communities across the African continent.
Africa Commons is a platform for discovering African historical and cultural materials held by organizations around the world. It searches across over 450,000 documents from over 4,500 collections and over 600 organizations, including libraries, museums, and archives, and then it links outward to the web repositories where the documents are located. Material types include books, magazines, newspapers, historical periodicals, government documents, manuscripts, letters, diaries, posters, photographs, ephemera, art, music, videos, oral histories, and more.
McMaster has access to three modules: "Black South African Magazines", "East African Magazines, Newspapers, and Films: The Hilary Ng’weno Archive", "History & Culture", and "Southern African Films and Documentaries".
Covers migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora through the voices of people of African descent. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the database includes never-before digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Database consists of 1,300 cataloged and searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera that cover the history, peoples, and social and economic changes across Africa from the 16th century to the early 20th century. All areas of Africa and related adjacent regions are covered.
This database features nearly 60 newspapers from across the African continent, all published before 1900.
Includes nearly 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
NOTE: The Library has subscribed to Struggles for Freedom, but not the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection.
This primary sources database provides over 180,000 pages of documents and images focusing on the liberation struggles in southern Africa, with an initial concentration on Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe. Contents include periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other particularly relevant books, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches.
Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Include 450,000+ citations and abstracts from over 2,000 journals; also includes book and media reviews and dissertations.
This database contains nearly 60,000 translated news broadcasts and publications, written by both the people who experienced apartheid in South Africa and those around the world who watched, reacted to, and analyzed it.
Includes over 40 archival collections with a focus on Anti-War Protest Movements, Colonialism, Holocaust Studies, and International Relations, scanned from national and local archives. Part of Gale Primary Sources.
