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Library Databases

Academic Search Elite (EBSCO) 

Supports high-level research in the key areas of academic study by providing journals, periodicals, reports, books and more.

Alt HealthWatch (EBSCO) 

A full-text alternative health research database focused on complementary, holistic and integrated approaches to health care and wellness. 

Bibliography of Native North Americans (EBSCO) 

Covers topics pertaining to native North Americans, including culture, history and daily life. This resource is ideal for researching the contributions, struggles and issues surrounding North America's indigenous peoples.

Business Source Complete (EBSCO) 

An essential tool for business students covering all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, finance and more.

Canadian Newsstream (Proquest) 

Provides users with access to current Canadian news content with archives as far back as the 1970s, from over 360 news sources including The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star along with newswires and broadcast transcripts in full-text format.

Canadian Reference Centre (EBSCO) 

Provides an optimal research experience for students keeping up with current events or studying Canada's global involvement with full-text biographies, reference materials and an image collection.

CPI.Q, Canadian Periodicals Index Online (Gale) 

Includes more than 1,200 Canadian periodicals, a bilingual interface (English/French), indexing from 1980 forward, full-text articles from 1983 forward, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s weekly magazine, and even travel handbooks from Fodor’s for Canadian destinations.

Education Research Complete (EBSCO) 

Covers full-text scholarly research relating to all areas of education for educators, administrators, and those seeking professional development resources.

Environment Complete (EBSCO) 

Offers full-text and indexing of books, journals and monographs in the areas of agriculture, ecosystem ecology, energy, and affiliated areas of study.

ERIC (EBSCO) 

Education Resource Information Center: An authoritative database of indexed and full-text education literature and resources.

Exploring Race in Society (EBSCO)

Essays, articles, reports and other reliable sources provide an in-depth look at the history of race and provide critical context for learning more about topics associated with race, ethnicity, diversity and inclusiveness.

GreenFILE (EBSCO)

GreenFILE is a free research database covering all aspects of human impact to the environment. Its collection of scholarly, government and general-interest titles includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.

Grove Music Online

Authoritative resource for music research with over 52,000 articles written by nearly 9,000 scholars charting the diverse history, theory and cultures of music around the globe.

Health Source: Academic Collection (EBSCO) 

A resource for up-to-date information on the complete range of health care topics with more than 2,500 embargo-free, full-text periodicals, reference books, pamphlets, and hundreds of videos demonstrating medical procedures and live surgeries.

H.W. Wilson Art Full Text (EBSCO) 

Features full-text articles, indexing and abstracts from an array of sources covering topics from fine, decorative and commercial art to photography, film and architecture.

Literature Resource Center (Gale) 

Provides researchers with unbounding evidence to support their literary responses and thesis statements through full-text critical and literary analysis.

MasterFILE Premier (EBSCO) 

Provides full-text magazines, reference books and primary source documents. It also includes an extensive image collection containing photos, maps and flags.

OmniFile Full Text Select (EBSCO) 

Provides access to a series of multidisciplinary full-text databases including:  Academic Search Elite, AHFS Consumer Medication Information, Business Source Elite, Regional Business News & more.

Oxford Music Online

The authoritative resource for music research with an ongoing mission to chart the diverse history and cultures of music and musicians from around the globe.

Press Reader

Acts as an online newsstand providing access to digital copies of over 7000 newspapers and magazines from over 120 countries.  Canadian publications include Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, The Globe and Mail, and The National Post.

Science Reference Center

Contains full text for hundreds of science magazines, journals, encyclopedias, reference books and a vast collection of images.

Shakespeare Collection (Gale) 

A comprehensive, cross-searchable coverage of Shakepeare’s work, critical reception, textual history, performance history and historical context.

SocINDEX with Full Text (EBSCO) 

Covers sociology and related disciplines featuring hundreds of full-text journals and millions of records with subject headings from a sociological thesaurus.

Tempo

This e-Journal documents the international new music scene while contributing to, and stimulating, current debates therein. The articles and reviews cover the new music scene in all its complexity, featuring discussions of compositional trends, performance practices, listening practices, new music contexts and reception histories.

Women Create Digital Library

"Inspiration for Your Imagination"

World History in Context (Gale) 

Provides rare primary sources, reliable reference and multi-media content about the ancient world through present day.

eBooks

eBook Collection (EBSCO)

This collection offers over 7000 full-text eBooks in all subject areas.

Metric Pattern Cutting for Women's Wear

A straightforward introduction to the principles of form pattern cutting for garments to fit the body shape, and flat pattern cutting for casual garments and jersey wear. 

 

Library Streaming Audio and Video

Audio

Naxos Music Library

World’s largest online classical music library. Major categories include: Orchestral Works, Concertos, Chamber Music, Vocal & Choral Works, Opera & Operetta, Ballet Music, and Film Music.

Email library@banffcentre.ca for login information

Video

Films on Demand

Films on Demand provides thousands of documentary and educational videos from a wide variety of producers, such as BBC, National Geographic, Cengage Learning, PBS, TED, and Scientific American Frontiers.

Naxos Jazz

From jazz legends to contemporary jazz. Listen online to an entire album or search for your favourite song or performer.

Email library@banffcentre.ca for login information

NFB Campus

National Film Board's streaming service of 5,200 documentaries, animated films, interactive productions, and short films in English and French.

Banff Centre Archives

Soundcloud

Vimeo 

Free Online Resources

Assembly of First Nations (AFN)  

An advocacy organization representing First Nations citizens in Canada.

Brickyard Spoken Word - Indigenous Artist Showcase

A program of Canadian publisher Brick Books, Brickyard was designed to showcase the best writing, poetry, and storytelling being created and performed across Canada.

British Pathé Historic Newsreel Films

Newsreel archive British Pathé has uploaded its entire collection of 85,000 historic films, in high resolution, to its YouTube channel. British Pathé was once a dominant feature of the British cinema experience, renowned for first-class reporting and an informative yet uniquely entertaining style. It is now considered to be the finest newsreel archive in existence. Spanning the years from 1896 to 1976, the collection includes footage – not only from Britain, but from around the globe – of major events, famous faces, fashion trends, travel, sport and culture. The archive is particularly strong in its coverage of the First and Second World Wars.

Canadian Heritage Information Network 

Canadian Heritage Information Network, providing collection management resources to the Canadian museum community.

Canadian Poetry Online

Produced by the University of Toronto Libraries, this is a collection of poetry from published contemporary and 19th century Canadian poets. Contemporary poets have selected their poetry and provided biographies.

Flickr: The Commons 

The Commons was launched on January 16 2008, when it released its pilot project in partnership with The Library of Congress.  Shares treasures from the world's public photography archives.

Getty Publications Virtual Library 

Free online access to books from the Getty Museum, Conservation Institute, and Research Institute in the areas of art, photography, archaeology, architecture, conservation, and the humanities. 

Getty Research Institute: Search Tools and Databases

Getty is a cultural and philanthropic institution dedicated to the presentation, conservation, and interpretation of the world's artistic legacy. 

Google Scholar

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research.. 

iPortal

Indigenous Studies Research Portal (University of Saskatchewan) 

Khan Academy

The Khan Academy is a not-for-profit resource with the goal of providing world-class education free of charge for anyone anywhere.

Library & Archives Canada 

Library & Archives Canada, a federal institution, has a mandate to acquire, preserve and provide access to the documentary heritage of Canada.

Moving Image Archive

This library contains digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Includes TV shows back to the 1930s.

Munich Digitization Center

Discover 2,753,203 Digitized Manuscripts, Prints, Music, Maps, Photographs, Newspapers and Magazines.

Museum of Anthropology

Digital reproductions of the collection of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR)

The NCTR was created through an agreement between the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the University of Manitoba shortly before the conclusion of the TRC’s mandate. The Survivors’ statements, documents, and other materials collected through the TRC now form the heart of the NCTR. Five of the TRC’s Calls to Action (Calls to Action 65, 71, 72, 77 and 78) refer to the NCTR and its role as steward of these truths.

Native American Ethnobotany Database 

A database of foods, drugs, dyes, and fibres of Native American peoples, derived from plants.

Online Cree Dictionary 

A web-based interactive First Nations language portal with dictionary and curriculum-based resrouces to further the development for Cree language in Canada.

Open Culture

A curated collection of high quality, free cultural & educational media on the web centralized for each finding. Includes audiobooks, ebooks, courses, movies and more.

Poetry In Voice - Indigenous

Read new Indigenous poetry. 

Public Domain Films

From the silents of Griffith, Keaton and Chaplin, to neglected noirs and the low-budget bliss of Roger Corman, plus nearly all of Hitchcock’s British films—all free for download or streaming.

Public Domain Review Collections

Dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas.

Spoken Web 

"A Comprehensive Web-Based Digital Spoken Word Archive for Literary Research.”   The SSHRC-funded SpokenWeb partnership aims to develop coordinated and collaborative approaches to literary historical study, digital development, and critical and pedagogical engagement with diverse collections of literary sound recordings from across Canada and beyond.

The Ojibwe People's Dictionary

UBU Web 

All things avant-garde on the internet, including 2,500 full-length films and videos; performance documentation; papers about audio, performance, conceptual art and poetry.

 

Free Online Journals, Magazines and eBooks

Alberta Craft Magazine

The only provincial magazine in Canada devoted to the craft sector.

The Cairn Newsletter

News about Canadian Rockies’ art, history and culture and the activities and history of the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies.

Canadian Cinematographer Magazine

Published by the Canadian Society of Cinematographers, this magazine aims to foster and promote the art of cinematography in Canada.

Caninuit 

A bibliography of Canadian Inuit periodicals

The Cinematheque - Program Guide

Established in Vancouver, Canada in 1972, The Cinematheque is one of the most active film organizations in North America, with more than 500 curated film exhibitions annually. Their bi-monthly Program Guide features programming notes and a calendar schedule.

Directory of Open Access Books 

A community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

Free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals which covers all subjects and many different languages.

Early Canadiana Online 

A comprehensive, full-text searchable set of historical monographs currently available for the study of Canada.

Gutenberg Canada 

A text-based website with links to free Canadian ebooks currently in public domain.

Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies

Contains research on conservation science, artefact studies, restoration, museum studies, environment studies, collection management and curation. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications 

A complete catalogue of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's publications from 1967, including full-text online books, journals, bulletins, and exhibition catalogues

Muskrat Magazine

An online Indigenous literary magazine full of great articles and links to Indigenous arts and cultural events.

Native Max Magazine

A digital media company devoted to inspiring, entertaining, and celebrating Indigenous people through positive storytelling across a range of platforms.

PressReader

PressReader provides interactive, digital access to thousands of the world's most popular newspapers and magazines. 

Project Gutenberg  

A library of over 60,000 free eBooks for which U.S. copyright has expired.

ProQuest Online Dissertations and Theses

An online database that indexes, abstracts, and provides full-text access to dissertations and theses.

Rise Up!

A digital archive of feminist activism.

Studio Potter

Represents the multiplicity of contemporary and historical ceramics.

Artworks and Museums (Open Access)

 

accessCeramics

accessCeramics is a collection of contemporary ceramics images by recognized artists enhancing ceramics education worldwide.

ADA: Archive of Digital Art

The ARCHIVE OF DIGITAL ART (ADA) has documented the rapidly evolving field of digital art since 1999. This research-oriented overview of works at the intersection of art, science, and technology has been developed in cooperation with international media artists, researchers and institutions as a collective project.

artaxis

A peer-reviewed source of contemporary artwork in ceramics and sculpture.

Art Canada Institute

ACI offers an ever-growing online, open-source comprehensive bilingual library and a wide range of resources on the artists who have defined this country’s cultural landscape.

Bibliography of the History of Art 

European and American visual arts material, including access to over 1,200 journals

British Museum

Browse or search over 2 million objects from the museum collection. High-resolution images for educational use and academic publications may be downloaded for free.

Canadian Women Artists History Initiative: Artist Database

The database is intended to provide a research tool that brings together the growing body of literature about women artists who worked in Canada and who were born before 1925.

Europeana Fashion

Explore fashion – historical clothing and accessories, contemporary designs, catwalk photographs, drawings, sketches, plates, catalogues and videos – from more than 30 European public and private institutions.

Emily Carr University of Art and Design eCollection

eCollections at Emily Carr is a platform that collects, showcases and preserves works created by the ECU community and items related to the University’s history. Content is freely accessible to the public.

Feminist Art Theses

The aim  is to provide a single point of access to research completed at MA and PhD level on the work on contemporary women artists and feminist art deposited in a national archive or University repository.

Getty Images

Includes 35 million images free to embed for non-commercial purposes only.

Google Arts and Culture

Users can explore a wide range of artworks at brushstroke level detail, take a virtual tour of a museum and even build their own collections to share.

Google Arts & Culture Fashion Project

Over 400 stories on fashion by curators from leading institutions across the world.

Guggenheim E-Books

Selections from key museum titles dating back to the founding of the Guggenheim in 1937 are now freely accessible to the public through guggenheim.org/publications.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Timeline allows you to explore the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection by time period, geographical region, or thematic category. You may use materials presented by the Met for limited non-commercial, educational, and personal use only.

Inuit Artist Database

This database features historical and contemporary artists from across Inuit Nunangat and southern Canada working in a wide range of mediums. Each biography includes relevant biographical information, an artist statement, exhibition and publication history, collection information and major achievements.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Provides over 20,000 images of artwork for free.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Provides access to images of art in its collection.

Museum of New Zealand

Includes over 30,000 images available for download and re-use in high resolution as a part of its Collections Online library.

National Gallery of Art

These digitized images of artwork have been determined to be in the public domain, are free to use and download, and can be used commercially or non-commercially.

National Gallery of Canada Online Collection

Online Collection: Official permission is required before reproducing any image from the National Gallery of Canada collection. 

Rhizome 

A born-digital art institution on the web with an artistic program including exhibitions, events, artist commissions, publishing, and ongoing research on digital social memory.

Rijksmuseum

The Rijksmuseum offers a representative overview of Dutch art and history from the Middle Ages onwards, as well as of major aspects of European and Asian art. High-resolution, public domain images are available for download for free and without restrictions.

Smithsonian Institution Research Information Center

Search over 8.8 million catalog records of museum objects, and library & archives materials. More than 1,096,000 of these records contain online images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other online resources.

Web Gallery of Art

Virtual museum and searchable database of European fine arts from 11th to 19th centuries.

Wosk Print Collection (Emily Carr)

A series of donations made to the Emily Carr University by Dr. Yosef Wosk containing works by Cézanne, Rembrandt , Renoir, Riopelle, Cocteau, Chagal, Picasso, Manet, Miro, Warhol, Goya, Rauschenberg and many other artists.

Yale University Art Gallery

Anyone may use the Gallery’s open-access material without further application, authorization, or fees due to the Gallery or to Yale. When you click on an item, the entry will state whether the image is in the public domain.

Scores and Music Research (Open Access)

Contemporary Music Score Collection, UCLA Music Library

The collection includes the digital, open access scores from the Contemporary Score Edition series, the first open access edition of new music published by a library, and scores from the Kaleidoscope 2020 Call for Scores, an open access collaboration with the UCLA Music Library. 

Hathi Trust Women Composers Collection

The Hathi Trust Women Composers Collection consists of digitized sheet music for approximately 3,000 musical works by more than 700 women composers. Most date from the 19th- and early 20th-centuries, with a few pieces from the 18th century.

IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project):  Petrucci Music Library

One of the largest online collections of digital scores and recordings contributed from around the world. The site contains works in the public domain as well as some contemporary works released through Creative Commons.

Music Treasures Consortium (Library of Congress)

Links to digitized scores and manuscripts from major university and cultural institution libraries, including the Juilliard Manuscript Collection.

The Mutopia Project

The Mutopia Project offers sheet music editions of classical music for free download, as well as a growing number of modern editions, arrangements and new music. All of the music on Mutopia may be freely downloaded, printed, copied, distributed, modified, performed and recorded.

Representations of Blackness in Music of the United States (1830-1920)

From Brown University: Sheet music, mostly vocal music of American imprint and primarily from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Composer Collections

Bach Digital

Designed to provide Bach researchers, professional musicians and amateur music-lovers with solid information on the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and other composers from the Bach family and their whereabouts.

Beethoven, Ludwig van (Munich Digitization Center)

The complete works edition as published by Breitkopf & Härtel.

BTHVN Beethoven-Haus Bonn - Digital Archives

Provides high-quality colour scan facsimiles of music manuscripts, written documents, music prints, pictures and objects.

The Hector Berlioz Website 

A personal site devoted to the music, life and works of Hector Berlioz.

The Brahms-Institut: Digitized Archival Materials

Musical manuscripts including first and early editions.

Chopin Early Editions 

Includes over 400 first and early printed editions of musical compositions by Frédéric Chopin.

Händel, Georg Friedrich (Munich Digitization Center)

Digitization of the complete works in the famous edition by the musicologist and Handel biographer Friedrich Chrysander.

Mozart Œuvre

A digital Mozart portal offering comprehensive and concise information about Mozart’s musical works. Users can access the complete works of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756–1791) in digital format via the internet for study and performance purposes, as well as sources, documents, literature, and many other relevant data.

Neue Mozart-Ausgabe: Digitized Version

The digitized version offers the musical text and the critical commentaries of the entire Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, edited by the Internationale Stiftung Mozart in cooperation with the Mozart cities of Augsburg, Salzburg, and Vienna.

Schubert Online

This online database provides free online access to digital images of more than 500 music manuscripts and more than 600 first and early editions of works by Franz Schubert.