Databases

The largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media available from the British Library, this primary sources database includes more than 1,000 pamphlets, proclamations, newsbooks and newspapers from the period. The collection charts the development of the newspaper as we now know it, beginning with irregularly published transcriptions of Parliamentary debates and proclamations to coffee house newsbooks, finally arriving at newspaper in its current form.

Features the newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and broadsheets that form the Nichols newspaper collection held at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford, United Kingdom. All 296 volumes of bound material, covering the period 1672-1737 have been digitized. This collection charts the history of the development of the press in England and provides invaluable insight into 17th and 18th century England.

This primary sources collection also includes approximately 300 pamphlets and broadsheets, most prevalent in the 1672-1682 period, which illustrate the transition from early newsbook publications to newspaper format. Distributed as stand-alone publications or in combination with a newspaper, these pamphlets cover a broad range of topics such as battles, religious plots, political intrigue, royal speeches and petitions to government.

From zines, newspapers and ephemera, to oral histories, films and photographs, 1980s Culture and Society is an eclectic and multi-faceted resource compiled from archival collections housed across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Capturing diverse perspectives, materials produced by grassroots organizations and under-represented groups are presented alongside government records and mainstream media to showcase the key social, cultural, and political concerns of the decade such as the rise of conservatism, nuclear threat, and the AIDS crisis.

Searchable full text of full runs of newspapers specially selected by the British Library to best represent nineteenth-century Britain. This primary sources collection includes national and regional newspapers, as well as newspapers from: established country or university towns; the new industrial powerhouses of the manufacturing Midlands; and Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Special attention was paid to include newspapers that helped lead particular political or social movements such as Reform, Chartism, and Home Rule. Penny papers aimed at the working and clerical classes are also included.

This database includes periodicals published in Great Britain between 1800 and 1900, giving insight into many aspects of the 19th century life--literature and culture, empire, feminism, the history of the book, the creative and performing arts, sport and leisure, science and medicine, the professions.

Series 1: New Readerships: Women's Children's, Humor and Leisure/Sport
Series 1 charts the rapid rise of publishing in a reading culture expanding with the rise in literary and leisure. The political spectrum of women's writing from Hearth and Home to the Women's Penny Paper offers insight into women’s changing status in the 1800s. Satirical and comic titles such as Punch and Figaro in London illustrate the humor of the period. This release also charts the growth of children's entertainment and education, with Boy's Own and Good Words for the Young, periodicals that helped shape the values of those future empire builders. Titles like Baily's Monthly Magazine of Sporting, Theatrical, Literary and Fashionable World track the explosion in sports and hobbies, from gardening to horse racing, cricket, cycling and golf.

Contains issues from nearly 400 nineteenth century American newspapers, drawn from a range of urban and rural regions. This primary sources collection encompasses the entire 19th century, with an emphasis on such topics as the American Civil War, African-American culture and history, Western migration and Antebellum-era life among other subjects.

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.

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.

BBC Monitoring was founded in 1939 at the start of WWII. Its purpose was to listen to radio broadcasts and gather open-source intelligence to help Britain and its allies understand global dynamics and assess emerging global threats and capabilities. Over the next 60 years, the scope of its monitoring grew quickly. Trained specialists transcribed broadcasts of speeches, current aff airs, political discussions, and social and cultural events worldwide. Transcripts, in turn, were translated into English, then read by experts who carefully selected critical content for publication. Finally, selections were summarized and curated into daily reports that comprise the Summary of World Broadcasts. These original daily reports often included commentary and evaluation by subject-matter experts, as well as synopses and specialist briefings. 

This curated selection of primary sources, covering several time periods in American history from 1790-2000, is designed for teaching and learning about the struggles and triumphs of Black Americans. Developed with input from Black history scholars and advisors, its easily discoverable materials are ideal for assignments and special projects focused on U.S. Black history.

A fully cross-searchable gateway to Black Studies including scholarly essays, recent periodicals, historical newspaper articles, reference books, and much more. It combines essential resources for research and teaching in Black Studies, including The Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, Index to Black Periodicals Full Text, Black Literature Index, and the newspaper Chicago Defender.

Contains approximately 1300 sources from 1100 authors, covering the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans. Where possible the complete published non-fiction works are included, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material.

Explores and provides historical background on more than thirty key worldwide border areas, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; Thailand; and others.  At completion, the database will include 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images. It  is organized around fundamental themes associated with border and migration issues such as border identities, border enforcement and control, border disputes; border criminologies; maritime borders; human trafficking; sea migration; undocumented and unauthorized migration; and global governance of migration.

Includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. Also includes biographies and an extensive annotated bibliography of sources.

Subjects include what women wore, the conditions under which they worked, what they ate, what they read, and how they amused themselves; how frequently they attended church, how they viewed their connection to God, and how they prayed; their relationships with lovers, family and friends.

Approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries, including several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials, drawn from 290 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings. All age groups, life stages, and ethnicities, many geographical regions, the famous and the not so famous are represented.

The collection has been developed alongside North American Women's Letters and Diaries, which uses the same software and indexing to provide access to more than 150,000 pages of American material from Colonial times to 1950.