The York School Library: Middle &amp; Senior School Library: Databases

Browse the complete list of subscription and open access databases recommended for student and staff research at The York School.

Database Passwords

Think Tanks

List of Canadian Think Tanks (McGill)
McGill University has compiled some of the think tanks, policy institutes, and research institutions currently operating in Canada. These groups present research and insights from a range of fields including social policy, political strategy, economics, technology, industry, business, and national defense.

Toronto Public Library Databases

Your Toronto Public Library card provides you with access to many useful databases, including subject-specific options.

Citing Sources You Find in Databases

Library databases can contain sources in a variety of different digital formats, including articles, eBooks, images, video, audio, and different kinds of grey literature. Use the APA Style, 7th ed. Guide to create appropriate references and in-text citations for the sources you use.

JSTOR Help

JSTOR is one of our most popular research databases. Use the following research guides to help you navigate research in different subject areas:

How to Use JSTOR (for students) (Copy)
by Gemma Larcina Last Updated Apr 4, 2022 25 views this year
How to Search JSTOR (Copy)
by Gemma Larcina Last Updated Apr 4, 2022 0 views this year
Art & Art History Resources on JSTOR (Copy)
by Gemma Larcina Last Updated Apr 4, 2022 0 views this year
Ecology & Botany Resources on JSTOR (Copy)
by Gemma Larcina Last Updated Apr 4, 2022 0 views this year
History Resources on JSTOR (Copy)
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Language & Literature Resources on JSTOR (Copy)
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General Purpose Databases

Advanced Placement Source This link opens in a new window
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Designed for students in AP and IB programs. Offers more than 4,200 full-text academic journals and magazines; more than 1.9 million photos, maps and flags; and full-text content dating back to 1985.
Advanced Placement Source covers the following subject areas: Arts and music, Biology, Chemistry, Computer science, Economics and statistics, Environmental and life sciences, Ethnic and multicultural studies, Mathematics, Physics, Political science, Psychology, Science and technology, and U.S., European and world history.
Canada in Context (Gale) This link opens in a new window
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Explore a broad range of Canadian topics, people, places, and events through topic overviews, news, and multimedia content.
Curio This link opens in a new window
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Videos and programming available in English and French covering topics in Arts, Business, Health, Math, Science, Technology, and Social Studies. Available channels include BBC, National Geographic, and News in Review.
Directory of Open Access Books This link opens in a new window
DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers.
Directory of Open Access Journals This link opens in a new window
DOAJ's index contains almost 17,500 peer-reviewed, open access journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities.
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other websites.
Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
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Offers 12+ million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources across 75 disciplines. NOTE: For remote access, click "Log In" (NOT "Log in through your library").
Our school's subscription provides us access to the following JSTOR collections:
Arts & Sciences I
Arts & Sciences II
Arts & Sciences III
Arts & Sciences IV
Arts & Sciences V
Arts & Sciences VI
Arts & Sciences VII
Arts & Sciences VIII
Arts & Sciences IX
Arts & Sciences X
Arts & Sciences XI
Arts & Sciences XII
Arts & Sciences XIII
Arts & Sciences XIV
Arts & Sciences XV
Life Sciences
Ecology and Botany II
Business IV
Sustainability
Security Studies
Lives of Literature

And Global Plants (plant science): http://plants.jstor.org/
Opposing Viewpoints (Gale In Context) This link opens in a new window
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Find overviews, news, and opinions on hundreds of today's important social issues.
ProQuest eLibrary This link opens in a new window
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General reference, multidisciplinary database offering 1,700+ full-text articles. Resources include scholarly journals, photos, maps, websites, primary and secondary sources.

JSTOR eBooks
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Unlimited access to over 76,000 eBooks. Explore high-quality academic eBooks on the arts, sciences, and more. eBooks are from over 100 publishing partners including university presses, public policy organizations, and independent presses.

Britannica School This link opens in a new window
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Online encyclopedia featuring full-text articles on a variety of subject areas. The platform is updated daily and spans a range of media, including video, images and audio content.
The Canadian Encyclopedia This link opens in a new window
The Canadian Encyclopedia is the national encyclopedia of Canada, published online by Historica Canada, with the support of Canadian Heritage. Available for free online in both English and French, The Canadian Encyclopedia includes more than 19,500 articles in both languages on subjects including history, popular culture, events, people, places, politics, arts, First Nations, sports and science.
Encyclopædia Britannica This link opens in a new window
A general knowledge English-language encyclopædia, published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The encyclopædia is maintained by about 100 full-time editors and more than 4,000 contributors. Since 2011, it is being published exclusively as an online encyclopædia.
World Book Online This link opens in a new window
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Online encyclopedia that offers full-text encyclopedia entries on a variety of topics. Resources include photos, links to related websites, and maps and atlases.
The World Factbook This link opens in a new window
Provides basic intelligence on the history, people, government, economy, energy, geography, environment, communications, transportation, military, terrorism, and transnational issues for 266 world entities.

Openverse (Creative Commons Search) This link opens in a new window
Openverse is an open-source search engine for open content developed as part of the WordPress project. It searches Creative Commons licensed and public domain content from dozens of different sources.
Review the attribution licences associated with an image (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/) to learn how you can use it, and the requirements for giving credit to its creator.
Pexels This link opens in a new window
Attribution not required (but appreciated)
Pixabay This link opens in a new window
Attribution not required (commercial & noncommercial purposes)
Unsplash This link opens in a new window
Provides free access to over 3 million free high-resolution images by donor photographers. Attribution is not required but is highly appreciated to promote the photographers' work.

Canadian Climate Data This link opens in a new window
Gateway to past Canadian weather data.
CIHI Health Indicators Interactive Tool This link opens in a new window
Provides access to aggregate level data on health indicators. Health indicators are standardized measures and can be used to compare health status and health system performance among different jurisdictions in Canada.
Google Dataset Search This link opens in a new window
The Dataset Search platform trawls the millions of open data repositories on the web for desired datasets, looking on publisher sites, digital libraries, and on author's personal web pages, and more. Google relies on dataset publishers to correctly label their datasets with the appropriate information, such as who created the dataset, when it was published, how the data was collected, what the terms are for using the data, etc.
odesi This link opens in a new window
odesi (Ontario Data Documentation, Extraction Service and Infrastructure) is a digital repository for social science data, including polling data. It contains over 5,600 datasets, with more than 22,600 additional dataset descriptions available for searching.
Our World in Data This link opens in a new window
Our World in Data (OWID) is a scientific online publication that focuses on large global problems such as poverty, disease, hunger, climate change, war, existential risks, and inequality.
Statistics Canada This link opens in a new window
Statistics Canada produces statistics about Canada's population, resources, economy, society, and culture.
World Bank Data This link opens in a new window
World Bank Open Data provides access to data about development in countries around the world.

Subject-Specific Databases

Getty Publications Virtual Library This link opens in a new window
Free search platform providing worldwide access to an extensive collection of digitized art history texts from a range of institutions. This multilingual and multicultural union catalog affords art historians and other researchers the ability to search and download complete digital copies of publications devoted to art, architecture, material culture, and related fields.
MetPublications This link opens in a new window
MetPublications is an online portal to The Metropolitan Museum of Art's comprehensive art publishing program. It features over 1700 titles, including books, guides, Bulletins and Journals from the last six decades.
National Gallery of Canada Collection This link opens in a new window
The National Gallery of Canada is home to one of the finest collections of Indigenous and Canadian art in the world, and is dedicated to amplifying voices through art. Search the collection by artist name, artwork title, accession number, etc.
Smithsonian Archives of American Art This link opens in a new window
The Archives of American Art is the world’s preeminent and most widely used research center dedicated to collecting, preserving, and providing access to primary sources that document the history of the visual arts in America.
Internet Broadway Database This link opens in a new window
A comprehensive database of shows produced on Broadway, including all "title page" information about each production. IBDB also offers historical information about theatres and various statistics and fun facts related to Broadway.

Ad* Access This link opens in a new window
Over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
The Avalon Project This link opens in a new window
Full-text of primary documents in law, history and diplomacy. Contains special collections such at 9/11, Cold War, and Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents. Also includes international documents.
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec This link opens in a new window
Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Quebec has started an ambitious digitization program for the whole of the published and archival documentary heritage produced in Québec since the 17th century, or of foreign origin and related to Québec. The collection includes many Quebec newspaper titles, both French and English.
Canadiana This link opens in a new window
19 million pages (95,000 titles) of digitized historical publications, including monographs, serials, and government publications. The collection is largely composed of materials published prior to 1921.
Dictionary of Canadian Biography This link opens in a new window
Online version of the Dictionary of Canadian Biography, including 8,500 biographies of individuals whose lives date between 1000-1930.
Available in English and French.
G. Robert Vincent Voice Library This link opens in a new window
The G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is a collection of over 100,000 hours of spoken word recordings, dating back to 1888. The collection includes the voices of over 500,000 persons from all walks of life.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
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.
IDEAS This link opens in a new window
IDEAS is the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available freely on the Internet. Based on RePEc, it indexes over 4,100,000 items of research, including over 3,700,000 that can be downloaded in full text.
Multicultural Canada Collection This link opens in a new window
The Multicultural Canada digitization project (hosted by Simon Fraser University) provides access to newspapers, interviews, photographs, print and material culture artifacts.
PhilArchive This link opens in a new window
PhilArchive is the largest open access e-print archive in philosophy. Formerly known as the PhilPapers Archive, it is built on and integrated with the PhilPapers database. Access to items on PhilArchive is free without a user account.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy This link opens in a new window
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy organizes scholars from around the world in philosophy and related disciplines to create and maintain an up-to-date reference work.
You can cite fixed editions that are created on a quarterly basis and stored in their Archives (every entry contains a link to its complete archival history, identifying the fixed edition the reader should cite).

Project Gutenberg This link opens in a new window
Online library of over 60,000 free eBooks.
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Research Database This link opens in a new window
A freely available online resource designed to help students and researchers locate secondary sources for the study of the science fiction and fantasy and associated genres. These include: historical material; books; articles; news reports; interviews; film reviews; commentary; and fan writing.

arXiv This link opens in a new window
arXiv is a full-text, open archive and distribution server for theoretical and applied scientific research papers. Hosted by Cornell University. Coverage 1991 to the present.
ChemSpider This link opens in a new window
ChemSpider is a free chemical structure database providing fast text and structure search access to over 100 million structures from hundreds of data sources.
CiteSeerX This link opens in a new window
CiteSeerx is an evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that has focused primarily on the literature in computer and information science.
Note: check the "Include results without PDF" box to retrieve only results with full-text availability.
eBird This link opens in a new window
eBird is among the world’s largest biodiversity-related science projects, with more than 100 million bird sightings contributed annually by eBirders around the world and an average participation growth rate of approximately 20% year over year. eBird data document bird distribution, abundance, habitat use, and trends through checklist data collected within a simple, scientific framework.
Federal Science Libraries Network This link opens in a new window
The Canadian Federal Science Libraries Network (FSLN) is a one-stop, self-serve portal where you can access library services and search the print collections and repositories of seven science-based departments and agencies from a single place. Wherever possible, departmental publications, reports, data sets and other content are freely available for anyone to access or download.
FoodData Central This link opens in a new window
FoodData Central is an integrated data system that provides expanded nutrient profile data and links to related agricultural and experimental research.
GreenFILE This link opens in a new window
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.
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species This link opens in a new window
Established in 1964, the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species has evolved to become the world’s most comprehensive information source on the global extinction risk status of animal, fungus and plant species.
National Wildlife Health Center: Publications This link opens in a new window
Access citations of publications by National Wildlife Health Center scientists since the organization's founding in 1975. Access to full-text is provided where possible.
PubChem This link opens in a new window
PubChem is an open chemistry database at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). PubChem mostly contains small molecules, but also larger molecules such as nucleotides, carbohydrates, lipids, peptides, and chemically-modified macromolecules. Contains information on chemical structures, identifiers, chemical and physical properties, biological activities, patents, health, safety, toxicity data, and many others.
PubMed This link opens in a new window
The PubMed database contains more than 34 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. It does not include full text journal articles; however, links to the full text are often present when available from other sources, such as the publisher's website or PubMed Central (PMC).
RCSB Protein Databank This link opens in a new window
PDB-101 is an online portal for teachers, students, and the general public to promote exploration in the world of proteins and nucleic acids.
ScienceDirect This link opens in a new window
ScienceDirect is a premier platform of peer-reviewed literature published by Elsevier. It includes publications in the fields of Physical Sciences & Engineering, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, and Social Sciences & Humanities. While most articles are paywalled, 1.4 million articles on ScienceDirect are open access.
U.S. National Center for Biotechnology Information This link opens in a new window
The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.