Databases

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Approximately 100,000 pages of published letters and diaries, including several thousand pages of previously unpublished materials, drawn from 290 sources, including journal articles, pamphlets, newsletters, monographs, and conference proceedings.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.

British History Online provides free access to selected core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. 

British Literary Manuscripts Online c.1660-1900 provides an intimate look into the lives and works of Britain’s major writers across more than two hundred years. From the rise of Charles II to the death of Queen Victoria British Literary Manuscripts Online c.1660-1900 contains complete facsimile copies of author manuscripts including poems,plays, and novels, diaries and letters as well as drawings and handwritten drafts. The collection traces the development of literary movements from the classicism of Pope and Johnson to the Romanticism of Wordsworth and the gothic novels of the Brontës.

British Periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of British periodicals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century (the same periodicals as are covered in the UMI microfilm collection "Early British Periodicals"). It includes millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Subject areas covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.

Explore the reality of Britain's Home Front in World War II through thousands of primary source documents reporting on and managing every aspect of the civilian population's daily lives, from evacuation to food rationing, and air raids to propaganda.  Sourced from he National Archives U.K. and The History of Advertising Trust, this collection documents the impact of modern warfare on civilian life.

Provides over 200 fulltext French-language journals in the disciplines of economics, law, history and geography, literature and linguistics, psychology, education, political science, sociology, and sport.

"Retrouvez sur ce site 44 697 articles parus depuis 2001 dans 161 revues de recherche et de débat. Les archives sont en accès gratuit, ainsi que les résumés, sommaires et plans d'articles, et le texte intégral de certains articles récents."

Cambridge Companions are a series of guides to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods. With over 600 titles and 4,000 essays, it offers subject or theme based cross-searchable collections, available in three sub-collections: Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture, and Cambridge Companions to Music.

Cambridge Histories is a series reference works of over 400 volumes spanning fifteen subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, with a concentration on political and cultural history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, music and the arts.

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.

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. The platform also includes a significant number of titles in the 'Health and Medicine' subject category from across Canada.

Includes the content of nineteen Canadian reference titles in a single online resource.

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.

Provides historic newspapers and magazines chronicling life and issues in pre-confederation and early Canada. Sample titles include: Canadian Illustrated News (Hamilton), The Elora Backwoodsman, The Empire, Ladies Journal, The People's Journal (Hamilton), and 40 more, from Halifax to Sault Ste. Marie.

Provides rare historical newspapers and magazines tracing events that led to the modern Canadian identity—the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, WWII and the emergence of new roles for women, the Cold War, the LGBTQ and other social movements, protests of the Sixties, and other transitions.  

Internet Archive Canada (IAC), with its Toronto scanning centre established in 2004 on the campus of the University of Toronto, has worked with more 250 institutions, in providing their unique material(s) with open access and sharing these collections the world over, including texts, collections, images, data, videos and audio. From the Archives of the Sisters of Service to the University of Alberta, IAC has digitized more than 675,000 unique texts. McMaster's collection is also included. 

Contains 19 million pages (96,000 titles) of digitized historical publications, including monographs, serials, and government publications. The collection is largely composed of materials published prior to 1921. Canadiana Online also includes all content from the closed Early Canadiana Online (ECO) collection, including content from the CIHM microfiche series.

The collection includes more than 100,000 pages of poems, drama, novels, stories, and related material—carefully located and secured from archives and rare book libraries, licensed from local publishing houses, and received from the authors themselves.

More than a million and a half Africans, along with many Indians and South Asians, were brought to the Caribbean between the 15th and 19th centuries. Today, their descendants are active in literature and the arts, producing literature with strong and direct ties to traditional African expressions. This literary connection, combined with the tales of survival, exile, resistance, endurance, and emigration to other parts of the Americas, makes for a body of work that is essential for the study of the Caribbean and the Black Diaspora.

Published by Readex/Newbank and created in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, this is the largest online collection of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in this region providing a comprehensive primary resource for studying the development of Western society and international relations within this important group of islands. This unique resource will prove essential for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century. This collection includes more than 150 years of Caribbean and Atlantic history, cultures and daily life. Featuring more than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, this resource chronicles the region’s evolution across two centuries through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other news items.

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.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of The Chicago Defender,  one of the most influential black newspapers in the United States.

Provides guidance on citing sources, reference formats, grammar and usage, and manuscript production. Both the 18th (2024) and 17th (2017) editions are available online. 

This primary sources database provides a wide variety of original English-language source material relating to China and the West, 1793-1980. Includes manuscripts encompassing events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the People’s Republic, key documents relating to the Chinese Maritime Customs service, original reports of the Amherst and Macartney embassies, letters relating to the first Opium War, survivors' descriptions of the Boxer War, diaries and personal photographs, extensive and fully searchable runs of missionary periodicals, over 400 colour paintings, maps and drawings by English and Chinese artists, as well as countless photographs, sketches and ephemeral items, depicting Chinese people, places, customs and events.

This primary source database, of interest to scholars of global history and missology, provides original materials from the CMS, founded in 1799 as an Anglican evangelical organization.  It includes documents related to missions to Africa, the Americas, East Asia, India, and the Middle East, Missions to Women, and records of the CMS.

Highlights include:

• Central records of the CMS and papers of key individuals associated with it
• Records of the the Loochoo Naval Mission (1843-1864), the first recorded Anglican and Protestant mission in Japan
• Archive of the Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India and the East
• Records of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society

Documenting Anglican missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the Church Missionary Society Periodicals offer a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounters. 

Module I features publications from the Church Missionary Society (CMS), the South American Missionary Society and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS), including the Mid-Africa Ministry, between 1804 and 2009. 

Module II focuses on the CMS medical mission auxiliaries, the work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society among women in Asia and the Middle East, newsletters from native churches and student missions in China and Japan, and 'home' material including periodicals aimed specifically at women and children subscribers. 

Includes images, interactive maps and chronologies, and biographies.

A dictionary of Sinitic characters and compounds related to East Asian cultural, political, and intellectual history.

Stretching from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Colonial Caribbean makes available material from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK.  Covering the history of the various territories under British colonian governance from 1624-1870, it includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.