Databases

Covers a broad spectrum of significant, current anthropological topics from a number of periodicals. Several thousand abstracts, selected and classified, fully indexed by author and subject, provide coverage of anthropological scholarship in the following subfields: Cultural Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics.

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.

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.  

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.

References to over 500,000 articles and essays on anthropology and archaeology, including art history, demography, economics, linguistics, psychology and religious studies. Indexes articles two or more pages long in over 800 journals and other works (reports, commentaries, edited works and obituaries) published in English and other European languages from the 19th century to the present. Brings together into one resource the highly respected Anthropological Literature from Harvard University and Anthropological Index from the, Royal Anthropological Institute from the U.K.

Contains the past, present and future American Anthropological Association (AAA) publications, including more than 250,000 articles from AAA journals, newsletters, bulletins and monographs in a single place, and cross-disciplinary resources for all things anthropological.

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.

Artstor is now on JSTOR. The Artstor website will be retired on August 1, 2024. To learn more, visit Welcome to JSTOR from Artstor. If you have image groups on Artstor, they will automatically be copied over to your personal JSTOR Workspace starting February 1, 2024.

Online access to approximately 400,000 digital images of visual material from different cultures and disciplines which document artistic and historical traditions across many time periods and cultures, and which focus on, but are not limited to, the arts. As a campus-wide resource, ARTstor is designed to be used by researchers in fields that do not traditionally use images, as well as by art historians, and to support a wide range of non-commercial educational and scholarly activities.

A bibliographic database covering all aspects of Indigenous culture, history, and life in North America. This resource covers a wide range of topics including archaeology, education, the gaming industry, religion, folklore, economic development, acculturation, mythology, missions, tribal governments, and ethnohistory. BIPNA contains more than 350,000 citations for newspapers, magazines, academic journals, books, reviews, and trade publications from the United States and Canada with expanded content from Great Britain and Australia. Dates of coverage for content range from the sixteenth century to the present. The database is an essential research tool for anthropologists, educators, historians, political scientists, sociologists, psychologists, linguists, theologians, and policy makers. BIPNA will appeal to anyone interested in exploring the contributions and lived experiences of North America's Indigenous peoples

Povides the life histories and selected bibliographies of deceased National Academy of Sciences members, written by those who knew them or their work. These biographies provide a personal and scholarly view of the lives and work of America's most distinguished scientists and a biographical history of science in the United States.

Cambridge is a not-for-profit publisher dedicated to the world-wide dissemination of knowledge across a wide range of subject areas, and currently publishes over 380 peer-reviewed academic journals covering subjects across the humanities, social sciences and science, technology and medicine. As well as those journals owned by the Press itself, they publish on behalf of over 100 learned and professional societies.

Indexes publications produced by Canadian governments (federal, provincial, territorial & municipal), government agencies & departments, research institutes and government laboratories. Full-text of reports will be available in the Microlog microfiche collection in MILLS Government Publications (2nd floor).  

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.

Streaming video collection of independent, social-issue and environmental films from renowned leaders in documentary film distribution, including titles from Bullfrog Films, Collective Eye, GOOD DOCS, Women Make Movies, and many others.

Cross-search over 30 indexing, abstracting, and fulltext databases in a range of subjects.

This collection from Wiley Digital Archives focuses on critical aspects of anthropogenic change, with unique and rare archival collections from the Environmental Society of America (ESA), Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew Gardens), the National Archives (UK), the Commonwealth Forestry Institute, CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International) and more. The collection will build to approximately one million pages or images of primary sources featuring data-heavy collections on Deforestation, Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries (Food Production); Ecology, Botany, Biodiversity, and Extinction; Water Sources, Irrigation, Wetlands, and Hydrology, with an expected competion date of December 2023.

Vast collection of folktales, myths, legends, and texts pertaining to folklore, arranged by title and theme, with a focus on northern and western Europe.

Provides researchers rich archival content, visual ephemera, monographs, and videos that explore how food shapes the world around us.

This collection of primary source documents captures the lives, experiences and colonial encounters of settlers and indigenous people living in colonial frontiers of North America, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand from 1650-1920. More than 20% of the content is Canadian, with over 1,000 documents drawn from the Hudson's Bay Archive and the Glenbow Museum.

Provides detailed indexing and abstracts for almost 700 periodicals covering the humanities (of which 470 are peer-reviewed), including feature articles, interviews, bibliographies, obituaries, as well as reviews of ballets, dance programs, motion pictures, musicals, radio and television programs, plays, operas, and more. Subject coverage includes archaeology, classical studies, art, performing arts, philosophy, history, music, linguistics, literature, and religion. 

Provides original materials on the political, social, and cultural history of Native Peoples from the 16th century well into the 20th century, including rare books and monographs, periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, census records, legal documents, maps, drawings and sketches, oral histories, photos, and videos from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Major contributors include the University of Alberta, U.S. National Archives, Library of Congress, Princeton University, Moravian Archives, and Gonzaga University.  Titles in this database are also listed in the library catalogue.

With material from Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, North America and The Pacific, the Informit Indigenous Collection is a platform for Indigenous worldviews, covering both topical and historical issues within Indigenous studies. The multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary framework provides access to emergent and groundbreaking research within the global community, and offers scope for critical international engagement and debate.

Covers social science and interdisciplinary research; includes nearly two million bibliographic references to journal articles, books, reviews and selected chapters dating back to 1951. It is unique in its broad coverage of international material and incorporates over 100 languages and countries. Over 2,700 journals are regularly indexed and some 7,000 books included each year. Abstracts are provided for half of all current journal articles and full text availability is continually increasing.

JSTOR provides access to a digital archive of journals in the areas of Arts, Business, Economics, and Sciences. JSTOR includes the entire runs of these journals, from the very first issue to the volumes published a few years ago. With a small number of exceptions - the "Current Scholarship" titles - JSTOR is a backfile collection and excludes the most recent issues (as part of the terms of the agreement with the journal publishers).

McMaster's subscription to  Kanopy provides online access to over 7,000 documentary films from a range of major producers, including PBS, California Newsreel, Kino Lober, Documentary Educational Resources, and many more.  Videos can be integrated with Avenue to Learn and accessed remotely by students.  The majority of the videos are closed captioned, and clip-making is allowed.  Transcripts are also available by clicking on the 'More' tab.

Full screen mode and playback speeds can be adjusted upon clicking the "Play" button of the video.

To access additional features such as creating a Clip/Playlist, Adding comments or sharing via social media, a personal login  (eg. Google) is recommended.

Further information is available at the Kanopy Help page

Abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences; provides over 361,000 abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,500 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, and dissertations. Covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Complete coverage is given to various fields of linguistics including descriptive, historical, comparative, theoretical and geographical linguistics.

The Mass Observation project collected information about everyday life in Britain during the mid-twentieth century, reflecting attitudes, behaviors, and public opinion. Created by three British researchers as a personal research project, its focus changed as it served the government during the Second World War and then emerged as a market research organization. The findings continue to be valued for their insight into British society, although sometimes criticized for the self-selecting methodology used to collect the data.

The online database provides over 2,000 File Reports (top-level summaries), Day Surveys from 1937-38, Diaries from 1939-67, and a range of Topic collections including: Household Matters and Household Budgeting, 1939-1950; Juvenile Delinquency; Korea, 1950; Radio Listening, 1939-1948; World Outlook, 1945-1950, Film; Reading Habits; Dreams; Religion; Victory Celebrations, and Capital Punishment.