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.

Africa Commons is a platform for discovering African historical and cultural materials held by organizations around the world. It searches across over 450,000 documents from over 4,500 collections and over 600 organizations, including libraries, museums, and archives, and then it links outward to the web repositories where the documents are located. Material types include books, magazines, newspapers, historical periodicals, government documents, manuscripts, letters, diaries, posters, photographs, ephemera, art, music, videos, oral histories, and more.

McMaster has access to three modules: "Black South African Magazines", "History & Culture", and "Southern African Films and Documentaries".

NOTE: The Library has subscribed to Struggles for Freedom, but not the African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection.
This primary sources database provides over 180,000 pages of documents and images focusing on the liberation struggles in southern Africa, with an initial concentration on Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.  Contents include periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other particularly relevant books, oral testimonies, life histories, and speeches.  

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.

Explore the rise of the global human rights movement during the second half of the twentieth century through the International Secretariat records of Amnesty International. The material within this collection is vital for studying the history of key political events, global social change, human rights violations and campaigns with themes including international relations, state violence, political prisoners, minority rights, and more.

An indexing and abstracting tool covering the information needs of the caring professions, including practitioners, researchers, and students in healthcare, social services, education, and related areas. It is focused on a core of around 500 of the most relevant English language scholarly journals covering aspects of health and social care from a broadly social scientific perspective.

BBC Monitoring was founded in 1939 at the start of WWII. Its purpose was to listen to radio broadcasts and gather open-source intelligence to help Britain and its allies understand global dynamics and assess emerging global threats and capabilities. Over the next 60 years, the scope of its monitoring grew quickly. Trained specialists transcribed broadcasts of speeches, current aff airs, political discussions, and social and cultural events worldwide. Transcripts, in turn, were translated into English, then read by experts who carefully selected critical content for publication. Finally, selections were summarized and curated into daily reports that comprise the Summary of World Broadcasts. These original daily reports often included commentary and evaluation by subject-matter experts, as well as synopses and specialist briefings. 

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

Povides the life histories and selected bibliographies of deceased National Academy of Sciences members, written by those who knew them or their work. These biographies provide a personal and scholarly view of the lives and work of America's most distinguished scientists and a biographical history of science in the United States.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

The Canadian Census Analyser provides access to Canadian Census Data (both short and long form).

A collection of monograph publications from Canadian public policy institutes, government agencies, advocacy groups, think-tanks, university research centres and other public interest groups.

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 full-text database containing working papers, journal articles, country data and maps,  policy briefs, special reports, research papers, videos, books, case studies, and current analysis & commentary related to international politics and related fields, including security studies, global finance, diplomatic practice, humanitarian law, global governance, development studies, and environmental studies. 

Content is aggregated from 300 international publishing institutions including government research organizations, independent think tanks, university analysis centres, and scholarly journals. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) supplies country surveys with political and economic data and maps. More EIU content is available in the EIU Viewpoint database.

This primary source database provides online access to the United Kingdom's Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices' confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966.  Includes official documents and maps covering almost the entire period of European conquest and colonization of Africa (with the exception of Egypt).

Contents range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties.  From coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy's defeat by the Abyssinians, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence, the documents in Confidential Print: Africa provide insight into the modern period of European colonization of the continent. 

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

CNTS contains more than 200 years of annual data in Excel format from 1815 onward, for over 200 countries, with 196 variables used by social scientists, academia, government, finance and media, including demographic, political, legislative, economic and social data.

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.

From the nongovernmental National Security Archive, this database consists of curated and indexed, declassified government documents covering U.S. policy toward critical world events – including their military, intelligence, diplomatic and human rights dimensions – from 1945 to the present. Each collection is assembled by foreign policy experts and features chronologies, glossaries, bibliographies, and scholarly overviews that provide insight into significant international issues.

Includes primary sources, supporting materials, and archives, along with video. The content is not only  useful for teaching and research in disability studies, but also in history, media, the arts, political science, education, and other areas where the contributions of the disability community are often overlooked.

A fully searchable collection of primary source documents from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), shedding light on diplomatic history throughout the 20th century. It is based on three print series which form a record of British peacetime diplomacy since the end of the 19th century: British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898-1914, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1918-1939 and Documents on British Policy Overseas.  Documents are selected and edited by the official historians of the FCO, with many documents specifically declassified for inclusion. 

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.