Databases

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A multidisciplinary index covering the journal literature of the arts and humanities; it fully covers 1,144 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, and indexes individually selected, relevant items from over 6,800 major science and social science journals. It contains a current total of over 2.5 million records. Subjects covered include archaeology, art, architecture, Asian studies, classics, dance, folklore, history, language, linguistics, literary reviews, literature, music, philosophy, poetry, radio, television, & film, religion and theatre. As of January 2000, the Arts & Humanities Index contains searchable, full-length, English-language author abstracts.

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 still-growing list of scholarship about 738 recovered writers and located texts, canonical and non-canonical. The bibliography identifies many hitherto unknown writers, including among them not only already familiar figures, but also women refugees such as the recusants, women in the colonies, Marrano women (Anusot), women translators, and English women writers in French, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh.  While "comprehensiveness" remains the ideal goal of the bibliography, in the case of some particularly famous women, like Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart, listings are limited to materials connected to these women's writings, rather than their lives.

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.

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).  

A database of over 60,000 full text contributions on a broad range of women's issues, extracted from over 2,245 sources world wide, including more than 200 periodicals. Content from mainstream periodicals, gray literature, and the alternative press. Includes English-language titles from East and West Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. Publication types include: journals, newsletters, pamphlets, reports; bibliographies, directories, fact sheets and guides.

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.

Brings together approximately 50,000 images of original manuscript and printed material, including a strong core of documents from the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ephemeral material such as ballads, cartoons and pamphlets is featured alongside diaries, advice literature, medical journals, conduct books and periodicals. The database is structured into five thematic sections:

• Conduct and Politeness
• Domesticity and the Family 
• Consumption and Leisure
• Education and Sensibility
• The Body

The purpose of the Digital Transgender Archive (DTA) is to increase the accessibility of transgender history by providing an online hub for digitized historical materials, born-digital materials, and information on archival holdings throughout the world. Based in Boston, Massachusetts at Northeastern University, the DTA is an international collaboration among more than sixty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. By digitally localizing a wide range of trans-related materials, the DTA expands access to trans history for academics and independent researchers alike in order to foster education and dialog concerning trans history.

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.

EEBO contains page images of almost every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700.  From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO's content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions. 

The Text Creation Partnership, which provides highly searchable versions of the texts, made the first 25,000 works freely available in 2015.  This interface, at the University of Michigan, allows proximity and boolean searching within the available works, but does not search the full EEBO database.  

For over 170 years, The Economist has published timely reporting, concise commentary and comprehensive analysis of global news every week. It covers the world's political, business, scientific, technological and cultural developments and the connections between them. Included in the archive are full-colour images, covers, advertisements, multiple search indexes, and the facility to browse each and every issue from 1843 to 2020.

The most current issues of The Economist are available in print and online via several databases. 

Brings together rare journals printed between c1680 and 1816, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Many are ephemeral, lasting only for a handful of issues, others run for several years. Topics covered are extremely wide-ranging and include: the writings of Sir Isaac Newton; the French Revolution; reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe; political debates; and coffee house gossip and discussion.

A searchable database containing works by French women authors from the 16th to the 19th century. The Women Writers Project currently contains texts by 40 authors. There are 5.1 million words, 98,000 unique forms in 99 documents.

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.

A cross-cultural database for information on women's history. It spans more than four centuries and 15 languages and includes over two million full-page images. Trace the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of that country's feminist movement on other countries and their movements.

The backfile of GQ magazine, from its launch in 1931 (as Apparel Arts) to the present. One of the longest-running, most influential men's magazines, GQ expanded its initial focus on fashion to cover general men’s-interest subjects. The digital archive makes available a wealth of editorial content and photography, providing essential insights into the 20th/21st-century history of fashion, popular culture, masculinity, and society.

Includes the complete runs of the US and UK editions of Harper’s Bazaar, from 1867 to the present (US edition) and 1929-2015 (UK edition). The issues are reproduced as high-resolution color page images and supported by fully searchable text and article-level indexing. The magazine covers over 150 years of American, British, and international fashion, society, and popular culture, facilitating academic research in wide-ranging fields such as women’s studies, fashion, marketing, advertising, material culture, design, and more. It chronicles of some of the most influential work from world-renowned designers, models, photographers,stylists, and illustrators of the period.

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.