Databases
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", "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.
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.
AM Explorer allows you to search across all of McMaster’s primary source databases from Adam Matthew. These databases cover a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences, and include manuscripts, letters, diaries, pamphlets, newspapers, artistic works, films and videos, advertisements, photographs, maps, and ephemera. Materials are sourced from archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions around the world. Since Adam Matthew originated as a British company, many databases reflect British content and perspectives.
Databases included:
The AAS collection provides some 7600 distinct North-American-focused historical periodicals, published between 1684 and 1912. Titles cover a range of subject areas, including, but not limited to: science, technology, medicine, Native American and African American populations, law, politics, government, music, the arts, literature, language, publishing, agriculture, business and industry, advertising and marketing, religion, philosophy, social movements, military matters, and leisure activities. A small number of Canadian publications, primarily from the mid 19th Century, are also included.
From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, this collection covers nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. The newspapers represent a wide variety in style, production, audience, and era, and can be used to discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.
Explore the rise of the global human rights movement during the second half of the twentieth century through the International Secretariat records of Amnesty International. The material within this collection is vital for studying the history of key political events, global social change, human rights violations and campaigns with themes including international relations, state violence, political prisoners, minority rights, and more.
Anthropology Online brings together a wide range of written ethnographies, field notes, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human behavior the world over. Essential for study in the areas of politics, economics, history, psychology, environmental studies, religion, area studies, linguistics, and geography, the database will contain more than over 100,000 pages of full-text material at completion, including tens of thousands of pages of previously unpublished material from major archives.
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.
Enfer ("Hell") from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is one of the most storied and sought-after private case collections of forbidden books. The collection was created in the 1830s to protect and isolate works that were considered contrary to the morals of the time. The entire collection was kept in a locked section of the library, accessible only by application to the Director-General of the Bibliothèque and approval by an advisory committee of curators before it was made availabe online. Enfer is made up of more than 2,400 literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs. The books in Enfer span from the 1530s to the 2010s, providing a wide perspective throughout time and in different societies on what were considered to be erotic and/or pornographic works. The documents are mainly in French, with some titles also in English, German, Spanish, and a smattering of other languages. Many of the books are beautifully bound and wonderfully illustrated.
A newly added section, International Perspectives on LGBTQ Activism and Culture, presents material from regions and populations that are not generally encountered in gender and sexuality studies, specifically southern Africa and Australia. The database as a whole brings together approximately 1.5 million pages of primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Rare and unique content from newsletters, papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other types of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more. Documents are sourced from over 35 countries, and include extensive material from the Canadian Gay and Lesbian Archives.
The Archives of Sexuality and Gender: Sex and Sexuality, Sixteenth to Twentieth Century is made up of more than five thousand rare and unique books covering sex, sexuality, and gender issues across the sciences and humanities and throughout history. It is the variety of titles and subjects in this archive that make the research opportunities intriguing. Through its many monographs, the collection offers researchers a fascinating collection of historical material providing multiple perspectives on the study of sex, sexuality, and gender. The archive presents content in fourteen different languages, with a predominance in French, English, and German and including Old French, Old English, and Old High German.
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.
