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.

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.

AM Explorer allows you to search across all of McMaster’s primary source databases from Adam Matthew.  These databases cover a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences, and include manuscripts, letters, diaries, pamphlets, newspapers, artistic works, films and videos, advertisements, photographs, maps, and ephemera.  Materials are sourced from archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions around the world. Since Adam Matthew originated as a British company, many databases reflect British content and perspectives.

Databases included:

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.

A comprehensive resource for art information featuring indexing and abstracting of over 600 periodicals dating back to 1984, including 280 peer-reviewed journals, as well as indexing and abstracting of over 13,000 art dissertations, and indexing of almost 200,000 art reproductions, which provide examples of styles and art movements, including works by emerging artists. The database covers fine, decorative and commercial art, folk art, photography, film, and architecture, and also includes a database-specific thesaurus.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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

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. 

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. 

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).

Oral History Online is a landmark database of English language oral histories. It contains at present more than 30,000 pages of full-text content that is available nowhere else in electronic format, much of which is available nowhere else in any format. This full-text material includes Ellis Island oral history narratives, exclusive Black Panther Party interviews, and other oral histories. With each quarterly update of Oral History Online, the publisher will add more of such proprietary (in-copyright) full-text interviews.

A collection of over 670 full-text scholarly journals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Individual journal titles are accessible through the library catalogue (Omni).

Cross-search over 50 indexing, abstracting, and full-text databases in a range of subjects.

Indexes over 4 million doctoral dissertations and master's theses completed at colleges and universities worldwide. 

Contains thousands of full-text e-books across a variety of disciplines. To display titles accessible to McMaster users, use the "Book Status" filter and select "Owned and subscribed to by my library." 

Individual titles are also listed in McMaster's library catalogue and in the standard ProQuest databases platform.

An international abstracting database covering key areas of women's and gender studies, indexing abstracts of articles from over 1,325 sources. The major focus is on education, employment, women in the family and community, medicine and health, female sex and gender role socialisation, social policy, the social psychology of women, female culture, media treatment of women, biography, literary criticism and historical studies. Both theoretical and empirical materials are abstracted..

A gateway to research tools for studying texts. TAPoR is a place for Humanities scholars, students and others interested in applying digital tools to their textual research to find the tools they need, contribute their experience and share new tools they have developed or used with others.

Launched by Oxford University Press in 1995, Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects. Each volume provides an authoritative and engaging assessment of a concept, field, or body of work, drawing out the central ideas, themes, and approaches. Expert authors combine facts, analysis, new insights, and enthusiasm to make often challenging topics highly readable to develop your core knowledge. All subjects across Arts and Humanities, Law, Medicine and Health, Science and Mathematics, and Social Sciences are now available online in an easily discoverable, fully cross-searchable, and highly accessible format.