Databases

From music and youth culture to politics and fashion, the period from 1950 to 1975 witnessed dramatic changes in society. This primary source database traces the development from 1950s austerity to the excess of the 1970s through a range of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video footage including:

• Pamphlets, letters, government files, and eye witness accounts covering key events of the period.
• The renowned Social Protest Collection from University of California, Berkeley.
• Underground magazines including OZ and IT; as well as American fanzines and alternative press titles from Bowling Green State University.
• Thousands of indexed photographs depicting the people and events of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
• Ephemera and memorabilia – posters, pins and artefacts.
• A collection of carefully selected video footage that brings the sights and sounds of the period to life.
   

Collection of primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European peoples in the aftermath of World War II.  Topics covered include the administration of refugee camps across Europe including England, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Yugoslavia; displaced Persons Assembly Centre reports; Jewish Relief Unit field reports; British Military Government in Germany; Belsen DP Camp; Maclean Mission in Italy; Politics of the Refugee Crisis; and, strengthening of the Zionist cause.

Sources include surveys, leaflets, photographs, reports of relief workers, US zone reports, War office memos, Exodus Camp records, Displaced Persons Assembly Centre weekly reports and correspondence of relief organizations.

This collection showcases a range of ideas, initiatives, and social movements devoted to people-powered politics and organizing from the 19th through 21st centuries. Ranging beyond a few specific movements, the archive paints a broad picture of the counterculture and many disparate organizations that represent this moment in modern Western history. Although the archive concentrates mainly on the United States and the United Kingdom, it also covers events and topics from around the globe.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of several Canadian, British, French, Indian and U.S. newspapers including The Globe and Mail, The Hamilton Spectator, Le Monde, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Observer, The Times of India, Toronto Star and The Wall Street Journal.

The provocative literary materials in this collection provides an historical time stamp and current affairs commentary on the transitional period in the Rastafari Movement's development—a period extending from the early 1970s through to the present. It is a forty-three year period during which the Rastafari Movement has been spreading across the Afro-Atlantic world in one form or another and becoming progressively globalized. Each title can be viewed separately by clicking on the title found below the Detailed Description section.for nursing and youth activities.

With nearly 70 million individuals dislocated by war, famine, and environmental disaster, refugee crises have been, and will continue to be, a highly visible part of our global reality. But understanding and addressing what the future holds requires reckoning with the past. Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement opens a window onto the history of refugees and forced migration so that the thousands of scholars and students who will study—and possibly work with—refugee populations may look profitably to the primary source record of the past to help them navigate the present and the future. Available in two parts:

• Forced Migration and World War II
• The Early Cold War and Decolonization

The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AACI), formed in 1945, was created to study the situation of Jewish survivors in Europe and the problems connected with their resettlement in Palestine. The committee was charged with gathering information and making recommendations on 1) the effect of Jewish immigration and resettlement on the political, economic, and social conditions in Palestine; and (2) the position of surviving Jews in Europe and the possibility of relieving the problem by repatriation or resettlement of the survivors in Palestine and other non-European countries. The committee called for a unitary state rather than partition based on ethnicity or religious profession. The records include AACI reference files, evidence submitted to the committee, transcripts of hearings, AACI reports, and papers of the Anglo-American Cabinet Committee.

Covers the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the early 21st century. Organized around more than thirty events and areas, representing a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, this collection will include at completion 175 hours of video, 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches), and more than 1,000 images. 

The brief but dramatic political reign of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy (1908–1957) is examined in this collection, from the Wheeling speech in 1950 to McCarthy's condemnation by the Senate in late 1954. McCarthy rode the crest of U.S. anti-communist paranoia in the early 1950s, and his tactics of accusation through insinuation and innuendo have come to be known as "McCarthyism". His popularity was short-lived, however; in 1954 his television appearances severely damaged his image, followed by a backlash by his political opponents resulting in a condemnation vote by the Senate in December that year.

This database offers the digitized archives of the Royal College of Physicians of London from ~1100 to 1980, and contains a range of searchable monographs, rare books, primary sources, manuscripts, correspondence, reports, conference papers, medical reports, medical education textbooks, proceedings, lectures, anatomical drawings, public health surveys, photographs, drawings, data and ephemera produced by the researchers and members of the RCP.

The history of medicine from early origins in folklore through to the modern practice is represented in this collection, with strong connections to the medical humanities, the interactions between medicine and culture, religion, and government, the establishment of public health systems, and the policies which govern medical education and practice. The content is presented as digital images, with searchable text and metadata, on a platform which also allows for visual and textual analyses and is cross-searchable with archives from other societies in the Wiley Digital Archives program.

This database offers the digitized archives of the Royal Geographical Society from 1478 to 1953, and contains a range of primary sources, searchable manuscripts, correspondence, reports, conference papers, proceedings, maps, charts, atlases, photographs, surveys, data and ephemera produced by the researchers and members of RGS. The history of geography throughout the British Empire in all its aspects is represented in this collection, which also focuses on environmental history, exploration, colonization and decolonization, anthropology, law, climate science, gender studies and cartography. The content is presented as digital images, with searchable text and metadata, on a platform which allows for visual and textual analyses and is cross-searchable with archives from other societies in the Wiley Digital Archives program.

Sabinet Discover is an information services tool providing seamless access to comprehensive African legal, news and research content. McMaster users have access to modules of Government & Law, News resources, as well as Sabinet African Journals, which is available on a separate platform. 

• Sabinet’s Legal Information Services include all South African Legislation on National, Provincial and Municipal level as well as all Gazettes from 1910 to current. Also included are Sabinet Labour and Sabinet Judgments.
• Sabinet’s News Services includes SA Media, a news clipping research service as well as the South African Press Association’s Archive with content dating back as far as 1977 to 2015 and all African News Agency’s newswires from 2015 to September 2022. 

Covers conflicts, policies, and relationships that have impacted the global arena throughout modern history. At completion, this collection will include at completion 175 hours of video and 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches). It is organized around more than forty events and areas and includes a wide array of themes such as terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and counterinsurgency, cybersecurity, ethnic conflicts and resolution, and nuclear threats.

Includes collections on the transatlantic slave trade and the global movement for the abolition of slavery from the sixteenth through the nineteenth century.  McMaster currently has access to

• Part 1: Debates Over Slavery and Abolition
• Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World
• Part III: The Institution of Slavery
• Part IV: The Age of Emancipation

In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, this database contains primary sources from several archives originally available only on microfilm.

Brings together primary sources, documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world on slavery and abolition. Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.

A multimedia database that combines recently published social work books along with documentaries, clinical demonstration videos, and lectures that illustrate the complex and challenging issues faced by social workers. Areas covered include children and families, older adults, crisis and trauma, immigration, diversity, school and social work, substance abuse, mental health, and health care.

This collection, digitized from originals held within McMaster University Library's Research Collections, contains pamphlets that deal with many aspects of Canadian history, literature, social and political conditions. Included are pamphlets on religion and churches, all levels of government, elections, peace movements and war service, Communism, local communities and labor organizations to name but a few of the topics covered. Approximately 250 pamphlets date from before 1867. Several of the pamphlets are in the French language. There are a very small number of pamphlets in this collection that have no relation to Canada; they are mainly British and American although a number of pamphlets concern Cuba and Third World countries. At least one pamphlet about Ireland is in Gaelic; a few pamphlets are in other languages.

This primary sources collection from the Wiener Library in London offers searchable personal accounts of life in Nazi Germany, photographs, propaganda materials such as school text books, small publications and rare serials reflecting Jewish life in Germany from 1933 to after the war, life in the concentration camps, in hiding, emigration and refugee life. Items are arranged in five categories: over 1,500 eyewitness accounts, about 4,000 photographs, over 400 Nazi propaganda materials (many of which are very rare), various Wiener Library publications from the 1930s to the 1960s, and the library's biographical index cards.

Includes digitized texts from the 12th and 13th centuries (Old French) and 14th and 15th centuries (Middle French). The database is expanded regularly. The texts are transcribed as accurately as possible. No corrections have been made; but some emendations are suggested in square brackets. References are to the pages of the editions or to the folios of the manuscripts. In the documents with line numbers, there may be sometimes a slight difference with the numbering of the editions, due to inconsistencies in the editions.

The Listener was a weekly magazine running 1929-1991. Developed as the medium for reproducing broadcast talks--initially on radio, but in later years television as well--the Listener is one of the few records and means of accessing the content of many early broadcasts. In addition to commenting expanding on the intellectual broadcasts of the week, the Listener also previewed major literary and musical shows and regularly reviewed new books. Over its 62-year history, The Listener attracted the contributions of literary icons such as E. M. Forster, George Orwell, Bertrand Russell, George Bernard Shaw, and Virginia Woolf. It also provided an important platform for new writers and poets, with W. H. Auden, Sylvia Plath, and Philip Larkin being notable examples. The complete archive of this landmark publication is an essential witness to the intellectual and cultural history of the twentieth century, and also to the golden years of radio and television.

Includes digital texts written in Greek from Homer (8 c. B.C.) to the fall of Byzantium in AD 1453. The project's goal is to create a comprehensive digital library of Greek literature from antiquity to the present age.  A number of lexica are provided to aid research, most notably the Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English lexicon, Cunliffe's Lexicon of Homeric Greek, Powell's Lexicon of Herodotus, and the Lexikon zur byzantinischen Gräzität (LBG).  McMaster subscribes to the Full Corpus.

Provides full page and article images with searchable full text of cover-to cover issues of the Times of London including illustrations, birth notices, obituaries, classifieds, editorials, book reviews, and more.

The most current issues of The Times are available online (plain-text) via Factiva, Nexis Uni and other databases.
The most current issues of the Sunday Times are available online (plain-text) via  Factiva, Nexis Uni and other databases.
The most current issues of The Times Literary Supplement  are available online (plain-text) via   Factiva and other databases.

This archive provides access to over 4,300 issues of The Times Educational Supplement, a leading publication on education policy and pedagogy in the UK and beyond. Spanning 1910 to 2000, the collection supports research in education, social history, women's studies, public health, literature, and the arts. It offers valuable insights into the evolution of teaching, school reform, and public discourse on education throughout the 20th century.

More current issues of The Times Literary Supplement until 2021 are available online (plain-text) via Factiva and Nexis Uni.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of the The Times of India, an Indian English-language daily newspaper.

The most current issues of The Times of India are available online (plain-text) via Factiva and Nexis Uni.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of the Toronto Star from January 2, 1894 to a few days ago

The most current issues of the Toronto Star are available online (plain-text) via Factiva, Nexis Uni and other databases.

An archival research resource containing a vast collection of rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during World War One. Over 1,500 periodicals written and illustrated by serving members of the armed forces and associated welfare organisations published between 1914 and the end of 1919 are included. Magazines have been scanned cover-to-cover, in full colour or greyscale, and with granular indexing of all articles and specialist indexing of Publications.

Arguably one of the most important databases for papyrological research, Trismegistos is an interdisciplinary portal of papyrological and epigraphical resources. The core of Trismegistos is Trismegistos Texts, which provides information about all published and semi-published texts from Egypt and the Nile valley, between roughly BC 800 and 800 AD, not only in Greek, Latin, and Egyptian, but also in Meroitic, Aramaic, Arabic, Nabataean, Carian, and other languages. It also comprises a number of other sections including, Collections, Archives, People, Places, and so on.

McMaster has access to several modules within the U.K. Parliamentary Papers database including the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, 18th Century (also known as Sessional Papers or Blue Books), House of Lords Parliamentary Papers, Public Petitions to Parliament  and Hansard.

Reproduced from originals at the U.S. National Archives, this primary sources publication provides a wealth of unique correspondence, reports and analyses, memos of conversations, and personal interviews exploring such themes U.S.-Vatican relations, the Vatican’s role in World War II, Jewish refugees, Italian anti-Jewish laws during the papacy of Pius XII, and the pope’s personal knowledge of the treatment of European Jews. The collection consists of telegrams, despatches, reports, and letters between Myron Taylor (the president's representative to the Vatican) and his staff, the State Department, other U.S. government agencies, the Vatican, and the Italian government. There are materials on political affairs, Jews, refugee and relief activities, German-owned property in Rome, property rights, and the Vatican Bank. In addition, there are materials on Axis diplomats, war criminals, protocols and religious statements, and records of the peace efforts of the Vatican.