Databases

A multi-disciplinary database that covers millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources including podcasts, transcripts and videos.

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.

With more than 1,000,000 human-edited definitions, Acronym Finder is the world's largest and most comprehensive dictionary of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. The entries are classified into categories such as Information Technology, Military & Government, Business & Finance, Science & Medicine, Organizations & Schools, Slang & Pop Culture. It also contains a database of US and Canadian postal codes.

Altmetric is a system that tracks the attention that research outputs such as scholarly articles and data sets receive online.  It pulls data from 

• Social media such as Twitter and Facebook
• Traditional media - both mainstream (e.g., The Guradian, New York Times) and field specific (e.g., New Scientist, Bird Watching).  Many non-English language titles are covered.
• Blogs - both major organizations and individual researchers
• Online reference managers such as Mendeley and CiteULike

McMaster users have access to the licensed version of Altmetric Explorer for Institutions, which provides a McMaster-wide view of the online activity surrounding academic research at the institution.

Researchers, research support staff, and administrators can explore attention on scholarly works, browse by author, group or department for their own institution, benchmark against peer organizations, report on the outcomes of outreach activity, and integrate the insights the data provides into evaluation and review processes.

Note: Access to the Explorer Interface ends December 31, 2024. 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.

Biographical dictionary of more than 19,000 notable American men and women from all eras of American history and culture who are deceased. Includes illustrations and links to other web resources.

Critical reviews of the literature in the social sciences, physical sciences, and biomedical/life sciences.   All articles are written by experts in the field who evaluate the primary research done on a topic and identify major articles in that subject area.  The database allows searches across the 45+ individual "Annual Review of..." journals.

First-ime user? Access requires an Esri ArcGIS account. To request an account, current McMaster students, faculty and staff should fill in this ArcGIS Software Request form or contact  contact libgis@mcmaster.ca. Once your account is approved, sign in to these products with the ArcGIS login (not Your ArcGIS organization's URL).

Provides location-based analysis that can be used for market planning, site selection, customer targeting and other decisions. Use web-based GIS (Geographic Information System) mapping technology to visualize demographic, lifestyle, behavioural, psychographic (e.g., PRIZM, Tapestry Segmentation) spending and business data for over 130 countries (including Canada). Data is derived from a variety of sources (e.g. Esri, Environics, Infogroup, Michael Bauer Research) and will vary for each country. Adding or importing your own data is supported.  Maps, charts, infographics and reports can be created and saved for any area.

The ArticleFirst database contains over 14.3 million bibliographic citations that describe items listed on the table of contents pages of more than 12,000 journals in science, technology, medicine, social science, business, the humanities, and other popular culture. Each record describes one article, news story, letter, or other item. Records contain OCLC library holdings, and many include abstracts.