Databases

An initiative of the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) is a comprehensive collection of primary source materials documenting Germany's political, social, and cultural history from 1500 to the present. It comprises original German texts, all of which are accompanied by new English translations, and a wide range of visual imagery. The project comprises ten sections, each of which addresses a discrete period in Germany's history.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (IFRC) was established in 1919 as the League of Red Cross Societies, with the goal of expanding the humanitarian activities and reach of the existing network of Red Cross Societies. Its archives, held at the IFRC headquarters in Geneva, cover the work of the IFRC around the world and include material focused on relief services to refugees and displaced persons after conflicts, campaigns for public health and community health, disaster aid in the wake of drought, flood, famine, earthquakes, and other events, programmes for community development and resilience, and support for nursing and youth activities.

This primary source database brings together material from The National Archives, UK and the British Film Institute to document the changes in reactions, responses, medicines, and treatments of infectious diseases within the British empire and across the globe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thematic areas include animals and livestock, disease prevention and interventions, institutional care, maternal and child health, and more, with a range of document types allowing researchers to explore this area of STEM history and colonial administration.

Online full-page newspaper archive of The Globe & Mail from May 1844, current 4 years embargoed. Coverage includes all the stories, plus thousands of images, advertisements, classifieds, political cartoons, births and deaths from Canada's national newspaper, dating back to the pre-confederation era.

The most current issues of The Globe & Mail are available in print and online (plain-text) via Factiva and other databases.

Originally published as Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza (История Великой Отечественной войны Советского Союза) 1941-1945, published in Moscow in 1960 in six volumes by the USSR Ministry of Defense. This work was translated by the U.S. Army Center of Military History and the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command. The complete official Soviet history of World War II, a monumental work of over 9,000 pages, this collection provides Western scholars with an opportunity to study what is considered one of the most significant historical documents produced in the Soviet Union. In addition to its importance in the war's historiography, this work is a valuable exposition of the development of a widely influential military doctrine.

The Guardian& and its sister newspaper, The Observer  provide facts, firsthand accounts, and opinions of the day about the most significant political, business, sports, literary, and entertainment events from the past two centuries.

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

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

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of The Hamilton Spectator (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) from 1846 to the present.

The most current issues of the The Hamilton Spectator are available in print and online (plain-text) via Factiva and Nexis Uni. 

As HathiTrust members, McMaster students, faculty and staff have access to a digital repository that includes millions of items from research libraries around the world. The collection includes both in-copyright materials and public domain materials. Full-text material primarily consists of books and other items published before 1923. This includes a large collection of U.S. government documents and a growing collection of Canadian government publications. New material is added daily. 

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.

Heritage is a growing collection of digitized Canadian primary source documents, chronicling the country and its people from the 1600s to the mid-1900s.  Featured collections include:

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.

Includes primary source, cross-searchable, full-text/full-image documents on some of the most widely studied topics in American history.

HCPP provides a vital historical record of Britain, its former Colonies and the wider world, providing detailed primary sources for the history of the past two centuries.  The database includes House of Commons parliamentary papers from 1803 onwards, Hansard (Commons and Lords), Diplomatic and Consular Reports (1887-1916), and more.

Provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects.

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. 

This primary source database chronicles human migration in the latter half of the 20th-century. News and analysis comes from reports gathered daily between the early 1940s and 1996 by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, a U.S. government organization that became part of the CIA.  These include translated and English-language radio and television broadcasts (transcripts), newspapers, periodicals and government documents.

Key indexing database for publications on Islam, the Middle East and the Muslim world, covering almost 100 years of publication. It is produced by an editorial team working at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, established to transmit knowledge about Islamic and Middle East studies. Material cited in the Index Islamicus includes not only work written about the Middle East, but also about the other main Muslim areas of Asia and Africa, plus Muslim minorities elsewhere. Over 3,000 journals are monitored for inclusion in the database, together with conference proceedings, monographs, multi-authored works and book reviews.

From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, this collection covers nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the US and Canada. The newspapers represent a wide variety in style, production, audience, and era, and can be used to discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.

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.

This collection was created to consolidate information available on United States and Indigenous Law, and also to share the influence that Indigenous American cultures have had on modern society.  It contains U.S. federal statutes and regulations, federal case law, tribal codes, constitutions, and jurisprudence, and includes:

• 418 treaties between the United States and Indigenous peoples
• 25 serial titles, including the American Indian Law Review, Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture and Resistance, and NARF Legal Review
• Over 770 works related to the constitutions and laws of Indigenous peoples in the United States
• Landmark Indigenous cases, congressional hearings, government reports, the Model Tribal Probate Code and more

A full-text research database containing articles, books and other sources on the fifty largest Indigenous groups across North America, Asia, South America, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. Developed in collaboration with Indigenous experts, topics covered include ethnohistory, health, cultural preservation, education, Indigenous knowledge systems, reconciliation, and more. A key resource for understanding Indigenous heritage, experiences, and sociopolitical contexts.

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.

An online bibliographyof secondary source material pertaining to the Renaissance and Medieval periods in Europe from 400 to 1700. Citations for books and journal material (articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies) are included, as are citations for dissertation abstracts and essays in books (including entries in conference proceedings, festschriften, encyclopedias and exhibition catalogues).

Digitized from originals held by the Library's Research Collections.  David Diamant is the pseudonym of David Erlich, a Jewish communist and committed member of the underground resistance during World War II. This collection consists of original documents collected by Diamant over a period of approximately 30 years dealing primarily with the Jewish segment of the French underground resistance; many of the documents originate with communist groups, and some deal with Polish groups. Most of the documents are in French, while some are in Yiddish.

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

A database on Greco-Roman antiquity (second millennium B.C. to 800 A.D.) covering a wide spectrum of subjects - language and literature, history, archaeology, philosophy, law, science and technology. It indexes books, articles in journals, conference papers and dissertations in English, French, Spanish, and German languages; 1,500 periodicals are covered. A brief abstract accompanies each article entry.

Provides free, organized access to electronic resources in medieval studies through a World Wide Web server at Georgetown University. The Labyrinth's easy-to-use menus and links provide connections to databases, services, texts, and images on other servers around the world.

Full page and article images with searchable full text back to 1944 of this French language newspaper from France covering leading issues and events, like World War II and the Fifth Republic, to French, European and international politics, society and business.

Presents openly available and hard-to-find materials from influential advocacy organizations - including materials such as blogs, zines, activist reports, digital ephemera, and underground publications - that otherwise may vanish over time.  Includes international content from the 1980s onwards.