Databases

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of the Calgary Herald from 1883 to 2010.

The most current issues of the Calgary Herald are available online (plain-text) via Factiva and Nexis Uni

Internet Archive Canada (IAC), with its Toronto scanning centre established in 2004 on the campus of the University of Toronto, has worked with more 250 institutions, in providing their unique material(s) with open access and sharing these collections the world over, including texts, collections, images, data, videos and audio. From the Archives of the Sisters of Service to the University of Alberta, IAC has digitized more than 675,000 unique texts. McMaster's collection is also included. 

Contains 19 million pages (96,000 titles) of digitized historical publications, including monographs, serials, and government publications. The collection is largely composed of materials published prior to 1921. Canadiana Online also includes all content from the closed Early Canadiana Online (ECO) collection, including content from the CIHM microfiche series.

The collection includes more than 100,000 pages of poems, drama, novels, stories, and related material—carefully located and secured from archives and rare book libraries, licensed from local publishing houses, and received from the authors themselves.

More than a million and a half Africans, along with many Indians and South Asians, were brought to the Caribbean between the 15th and 19th centuries. Today, their descendants are active in literature and the arts, producing literature with strong and direct ties to traditional African expressions. This literary connection, combined with the tales of survival, exile, resistance, endurance, and emigration to other parts of the Americas, makes for a body of work that is essential for the study of the Caribbean and the Black Diaspora.

Published by Readex/Newbank and created in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, this is the largest online collection of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in this region providing a comprehensive primary resource for studying the development of Western society and international relations within this important group of islands. This unique resource will prove essential for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century. This collection includes more than 150 years of Caribbean and Atlantic history, cultures and daily life. Featuring more than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, this resource chronicles the region’s evolution across two centuries through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other news items.

Founded in 1974 in Trinidad & Tobago, Banyan Productions was the first television producer of innovative and entertaining programs for, about, and by the Caribbean people and culture. Banyan’s mission was to provide the Caribbean people with the means to tell their stories to one anotherwithout influence from the outside world. Now, for the first time, those stories will be available on the Alexander Street platform.

With a mixture of history, entertainment, and social commentary, Banyan has produced a film library  covering documentary, drama, music, dance, and much more, spanning the past forty years.

Previously inaccessible in streaming format, this collection features more than 1,100 hours of edited programs along with unedited footage that will enhance study across a host of disciplines and subjects, including: Caribbean Studies, Black Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology, Religion, Visual Arts, Dance, Music, Literature, Theatre and Media Studies.

This collection of Foreign Office files explores the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s. It encompasses the era of “The Great Game” - a political and diplomatic confrontation between the Russian and British Empires for influence, territory and trade across a vast region, from the Black Sea in the west to the Pamir Mountains in the east.

Comprised of correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, newspaper excerpts and other materials from the FO 65, FO 106, FO 371 and FO 539 series, this resource forms one of the greatest existing sets of historical documents relating to this region, offering insights not only into the impact of Great Power politics on the region, but also the region’s peoples, cultures and societies.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of The Chicago Defender,  one of the most influential black newspapers in the United States.

This primary sources database provides a wide variety of original English-language source material relating to China and the West, 1793-1980. Includes manuscripts encompassing events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the People’s Republic, key documents relating to the Chinese Maritime Customs service, original reports of the Amherst and Macartney embassies, letters relating to the first Opium War, survivors' descriptions of the Boxer War, diaries and personal photographs, extensive and fully searchable runs of missionary periodicals, over 400 colour paintings, maps and drawings by English and Chinese artists, as well as countless photographs, sketches and ephemeral items, depicting Chinese people, places, customs and events.

This primary source database, of interest to scholars of global history and missology, provides original materials from the CMS, founded in 1799 as an Anglican evangelical organization.  It includes documents related to missions to Africa, the Americas, East Asia, India, and the Middle East, Missions to Women, and records of the CMS.

Highlights include:

• Central records of the CMS and papers of key individuals associated with it
• Records of the the Loochoo Naval Mission (1843-1864), the first recorded Anglican and Protestant mission in Japan
• Archive of the Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India and the East
• Records of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society

Documenting Anglican missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the Church Missionary Society Periodicals offer a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounters. 

Module I features publications from the Church Missionary Society (CMS), the South American Missionary Society and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS), including the Mid-Africa Ministry, between 1804 and 2009. 

Module II focuses on the CMS medical mission auxiliaries, the work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society among women in Asia and the Middle East, newsletters from native churches and student missions in China and Japan, and 'home' material including periodicals aimed specifically at women and children subscribers. 

Includes images, interactive maps and chronologies, and biographies.

Colonial Caribbean covers the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870. This extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, as well as details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.

Content Warning: 
Colonial Caribbean covers topics which are inextricably linked to stories of oppression and abuse. Please be aware that distressing content can be found throughout the documents and contextual essays in this resource, including graphic descriptions and first-hand accounts of physical or sexual abuse.

Stretching from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords. 

Colonial Legacies: Empire and Commonwealth Periodicals is a digital archive comprising over 30 periodicals concerning the 20th-century history of the British Empire, decolonization, and the history and culture of former colonies. The archive offers a mixture of British publications about the empire and titles published in Commonwealth countries (including Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, South Africa, and Papua New Guinea).

Coverage spans over 150 years, ranging from the late-19th century to the 21st – these publications encompass the empire’s later phase and its post-independence legacies. It will support research in key events in colonial history, including the latter stages of the Scramble for Africa, the world wars, independence movements, the creation of the Commonwealth and more. While official publications contain valuable information about colonial administration and ideology, more popular titles, covering the arts, society, and general interests, provide insights into many facets of Commonwealth countries’ history and society before and after independence.

This primary sources collection consists of historical documents from the British National Archives that offer perspectives on politics, diplomacy and everyday life in the German-occupied countries. Includes detailed information indexed by year and section, from the occupied states of Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Vatican, and the neutral countries--Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland--along with a day-by-day chronology of the war, photographs and posters from The National Archives, film footage of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents in France from the Imperial War Museum, links to related resources and three newly commissioned essays by leading experts in addition to a comprehensive introduction by Dr. Michael Stenton.

This primary source database provides online access to the United Kingdom's Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices' confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966.  Includes official documents and maps covering almost the entire period of European conquest and colonization of Africa (with the exception of Egypt).

Contents range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties.  From coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy's defeat by the Abyssinians, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence, the documents in Confidential Print: Africa provide insight into the modern period of European colonization of the continent. 

Digitized from originals held by the Library's Research Collections.  The collection contains items originating from prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II. Most of the collection consists of letters written or received by prisoners, but also includes receipts for parcels, money orders and personal effects; paper currency; and realia, including Star of David badges that Jews were forced to wear.