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.

Contains images for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Five product categories are covered:  Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda. Browse or search for ads by categories, company, product, date, publication, subject, medium, headline and audience.

This not-for-profit foundation website provides content "to enrich the understanding of advertising and its role in culture, society and the economy."

Website includes thousands of television commercials created or collected by D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency from the 1950s to 1980s. Search by keyword(s) or browse by company, title or subject.

Covers the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Include 450,000+ citations and abstracts from over 2,000 journals; also includes book and media reviews and dissertations.

American Film Scripts Online (AFSO) contains 1,009 scripts by 1,062 writers together with detailed, fielded information on the scenes, characters and people related to the scripts. In addition, the database includes facsimilie images for more than 500 of these screenplays. Most of the scripts have never been published before, and are not otherwise available online.

The rationale behind the database is not only to provide access to many previously unpublished screenplays, but to allow scripts to become part of the established corpus of literary works. Legal, authoritative versions of these screenplays will, the producers hope, be consulted by a wide range of scholars, including historians, sociologists, and those who study literature.

Explore the history of twentieth century broadcasting in America through the papers of early pioneer, David Sarnoff, and the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Chart how the rise of large media corporations transformed radio from a one-to-one communication tool to a means of broadcasting information and ideas to the masses, and witness the impact of broadcasting innovations, such as television, on advertising, consumer culture, global conflicts, and the Space Race.

Contains citations and full-text articles from thousands of business sources, including academic journals, magazines, and trade publications. Also includes  worldwide company, country and industry reports. Covers all areas of business, including accounting, economics, finance, management, management information systems, marketing and international business.

Designed for universities and colleges, this collection provides full-length Canadian video programs, documentaries, feature films, short edu-clips, and podcasts. Can-CORE partners with Canadian and Indigenous filmmakers, and provides a growing collection of content from indigenous filmmakers by and about Indigenous peoples and issues. An 'Indigenous Content Only' filter can be used with any keyword or browse search.

Includes content from a broad range of Canadian sources including scholarly journals, magazines, reports, news, radio & television transcripts and dissertations. Useful for research on hundreds of topics in the fields of business, science and technology, medicine, humanities and the arts.

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).  

Communication Source supports research on mass media, communications theory, linguistics, organizational communication, phonetics and speech pathology.  Content is derived from academic journals, conference papers, conference proceedings, trade publications, magazines and other periodicals.  Provides indexing and abstracting for over 1,100 core titles and contains the full text for more than 700 journals.

Articles from key Canadian journals, magazines and newspapers. Multidisciplinary database with selected full-text.

Curio.ca provides streaming access to selected educational content from CBC and Radio-Canada, with documentaries from television and radio, news reports, and archival material.  Both English and French language content is included.  Programs are pulled from the Doc Zone, The Nature of Things, The Fifth Estate, Marketplace, The Passionate Eye, and more.

Note:  McMaster's subscription does not include the BBC or National Geographic channel.

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.

Contains primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to the 21st century. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theatre are included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles. Issues have been scanned in high-resolution color, with granular indexing of articles, covers, ads and reviews. Subject coverage includes the film industry, music business, rock and pop, jazz and blues, theatre, television, radio, and video games. 

McMaster has access to the following collections: Cinema, Film and Television (Parts 1 & 2), Music, Radio and Stage, and Video Gaming.

A multi-disciplinary database that provides access to current and archived news, business and company information worldwide. The database contains content from more than 30,000 sources from 200 countries in 32 languages.

Citations to articles in film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews. Provides cover-to-cover indexing and abstracts for more than 380 publications, and selected coverage of 300 more.

Covers industry papers, news journalism, and scholarly academic journals on topics for film and television. Titles include Film Journal International, Journal of British Cinema & Television, Film Criticism, Post Script, and Variety, as well as technical publications such as SMPTE.

Also covers international film and television publications such as Cahiers du Cinema, Cinema in India, Cinemamaya, Filmkultura, Segnocinema, and Kinetoscopio.

HeinOnline: Government, Politics and Law for Canada is a fully-searchable, image-based government document and legal research database with a focus on the Canadian context.

Indexes and abstracts journal articles, books and dissertations. Covers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada, which are covered in America: History and Life). Over 2,300 academic historical journals from every major country, and selective coverage of hundreds of journals in the social sciences and humanities that are of interest to researchers and students of history.

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. 

Collection contains digitized primary source material from the archives of the J. Walter Thompson Company (JWT), one of the largest and oldest advertising agencies in the world. The documents reveal the history, operation, policies and achievements of the company and its role in shaping twentieth-century culture, society, business, marketing, consumer and economic history as well as human psychology.

A large number of brands, companies, and industries are covered from automobiles to travel and tourism. Nine major clients are featured in the collection: Kodak, Kellogg, Kraft, Oscar Mayer, Pan Am, R.T. French, Scott Paper Company, United States Marine Corps, and White Castle. Materials include market research reports, presentations, meeting minutes, scripts for advertisements, correspondence, proofs of advertisements, and more.

This databases showcases two radio programs: the weekly Spanish-language Enfoque Nacional (1979-1988) and the Daily English-language Latin File (1988-1990), available for the first time in a searchable database as digitized audio with transcripts. They focus on Latinx issues related to politics, sociology, human rights, the arts and more with interviews of key figures and news reporting by a new generation of Latino/a journalists at the time.

• Enfoque Nacional, 1979-1988 (Weekly, 500 episodes of 30 minutes each) 
• Latin File, 1988-1990 (Daily, 414 episodes of 15 minutes each)

Includes materials ranging from texts, letters, periodicals, speeches, interviews, and ephemera covering LGBT political, social and cultural movements to memoirs, biographies, poetry, and works of fiction that provide insight into the lives of lesbian, gay, transgender, and bisexual individuals and the community. Content partners include the Kinsey Institute Archive and Library, Windy City Media Group, ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archive, and notable LGBT publishers Alyson Books, Cleis Press, and Firebrand Books as well as mainstream trade and university publishers.

Provides indexing and abstracts for more than 190 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender-specific core periodicals, with fulltext for 120  of the most important and historically significant journals, magazines and regional newspapers. In addition, it contains more than 330 LGBT-specific core books and reference works, grey literature, including newsletters, case studies, speeches, etc. and a specialized LGBT thesaurus containing over 6,400 terms. Disciplines covered by LGBT Life include civil liberties, culture, employment, family, history, politics, psychology, religion, sociology and more.

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.

Online collection of recorded sound, including folk, popular, classical and world music, speeches, and oral histories, delivered via streaming audio.

Browse by musical instrument, geographic area, or topic, e.g. American folk traditions, blues, bluegrass and old-time country, American Indian traditions, world traditions (by continent), jazz, classical, spoken word, sound effects.

Historical content includes: ballads from the American Revolution, War of 1812, or the American Civil War; freedom and protest songs from the Civil Rights era; songs from the Slave Coast; Canada's history in song. Spoken word content includes: speeches, biography, memoir, drama (e.g. ancient Greek tragedies), poetry, language instruction.

Features streaming videos of films, clips and trailers from the National Film Board (NFB) collection, including NFB world-renowned documentaries, films that chronicle key moments in the lives of Canadians and works that take a stand on issues of global importance: the environment, human rights, international conflict and more. It also contains acclaimed Canadian dramatic features, documentaries, animated films, and experimental works.

An archival collection comprising the backfiles of 15 major magazines (including Newsweek), spanning areas such as current events, international relations, and public policy. The titles offer multiple perspectives on the contemporary contexts of the major events, trends, and interests in these fields throughout the twentieth century.