Databases

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.

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.

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

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).  

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.

Provides full-text access to Conference Board of Canada reports and recorded webinars. Research areas covered include economic trends, organizational performance and public policy.

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.

Contains nearly 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. Collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women. 

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

This primary sources database provides images of original documents related to the British Empire. The content is structured around five thematic sections: Cultural Contacts; Literature; The Visual Empire; Religion; and Race, Class, Colonialism and Imperialism.

This playlist includes two seasons produced by RedCloud Studios and featuring Archaeologist/Artist Kris Nahrgang and Dancer/Activist Sarain Carson Fox. Both share their personal origin stories and talk about where they are at in their own journey of identity.

This curated playlist, sourced from McIntyre Media, provides a collection of multimedia resources primarily focused on Indigenous experiences, histories, and perspectives within the Canadian context. The collection features a wide array of video content, spanning various topics such as the child welfare system, health, residential schools, culture, and Indigenous resistance. The resources encompass a mix of documentaries, interviews, talks, and short films, contributing to a multifaceted exploration of Indigenous issues. Many of these works are created by or feature Indigenous individuals, offering firsthand perspectives on significant subjects. All resources have specified expiration dates and are accompanied by supplementary guides and information.

Wild Kitchen is a playlist based in the Canadian Sub-arctic about people who harvest wild food. From Indigenous hunters and multi-generational fishermen to pioneering homesteaders, Wild Kitchen explores living sustainably off the land. Juno award-winning Inuit actor and performing artist, Tiffany Ayalik and her production team, travel to the remote wilderness to learn about wild food, its cultural significance, and the people who harvest it..

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.

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:

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.

The iPortal is a database of full-text online resources such as articles, e-books, theses, government publications, videos, oral histories, and digitized archival documents and photographs. Its content has a primary focus on Indigenous peoples of Canada with a secondary focus on North American materials and beyond.

This initiative began in 2005 at the University of Saskatchewan as a resource for faculty, students, researchers, and members of the community and currently links to over 65,000 items. Anyone can use the freely available materials in the iPortal but some resources are licensed and may only be available via GetIt@Mac links.

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

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.

Contains 244 plays by 48 playwrights representing the stories and creative energies of American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the twentieth century. More than half of the works are previously unpublished, and hard to find, representing groups such as Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others. Together, the plays demonstrate Native theater’s diversity of tribal traditions and approaches to drama—melding conventional dramatic form with ancient storytelling and ritual performance elements, experimenting with traditional ideas of time and narrative, or challenging Western dramatic structure.

Includes biographies, auto-biographies, personal narratives, speeches, diaries, letters, and oral histories, with over 119,000 pages of text and images. Full-length reference works also are included to give background and context to the narratives.

Provides simultaneous access to the databases PAIS (Public Affairs Information Service) Index, Policy File Index, Political Science Database and Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, covering the international literature in political science and public administration/policy, along with related fields. Together, they provide abstracts, indexing and full text coverage of journal articles, country reports, dissertations, think-tank reports, working papers, government documents and more, including full-text from many leading political science and international relations journals.