History, Ancient including early Science and Medicine

TMU Libraries Omni Search
For optimum use, sign in. This search engine searches for journal articles (many are available electronically), books, e-books, theses and dissertations, and newspaper articles from some recent and a selection of archival newspapers. It indexes digitized content such as out-of-copyright books and journals that are available from sources such as The Internet Archive and The Hathi Trust. Omni facilitates discovery and borrowing of print books from other universities in Ontario excluding the University of Toronto.

Refine your search using the filters on the left.

For more advanced searching across a more targeted set of resources, you may want to try a discipline specific indexing/abstracting database or collection as listed in the next boxes.

Omni replaces the traditional catalogue that used to search for books, e-books, dvds, and other resources except for journal articles. Now, Omni can be used to look for known books, or when using the default (a keyword) search to find some relevant titles for an assignment. Whether using a Simple or Advanced search, you can use the filters on the left to limit to Resource Type: Book chapters, or, Books & eBooks. You can use the Browse Search with the drop down option for Library of Congress Subject Heading. This type of search is ideal for finding Books and Ebooks in our collection. It will display a selective index of subject headings most relevant to your search When you find book records, you can use the Subject terms in the record to link to similar items. If you want to find books, e-books and articles at the same time, consider using Omni, Advanced Search and Subject Contains ...

Encyclopedias and dictionaries

remain useful sources of quick information.  In addition to free sources such as Wikipedia, consider some of our licensed electronic content from publishers such as Oxford University Press, as well as printed items. 

Try using Omni, Advanced Search and Subject contains: [type a topical word or words] and either dictionaries, or, encyclopedias

Example Subject contains searches:

• archaeology dictionaries
• archaeology encyclopedias
• civilization medieval encyclopedias
• egypt antiquities encyclopedias
• egypt civilization dictionaries
• egypt civilization encyclopedias
• egypt encyclopedias
• history, ancient encyclopedias
• medicine medieval encyclopedias
• middle ages encyclopedias
• science history encyclopedias

Example Library of Congress subject heading search using Omni, Browse Search

• classical dictionaries

An Open Access Encyclopedia worth visiting is the following:

Ancient History Encyclopedia 

Biographical information

Try Library of Congress subject headings such as:

• classical biography dictionaries

Consider these resources:

• Oxford Dictionary of the Classical World
• Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages
• The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists: The Greek Tradition and its Many Heirs
• Encyclopedia of Islam Three
• Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science
• McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology. 10th ed. (2007. 20 vols.)
• Native Peoples A to Z: A Reference Guide to Native Peoples of the Western Hemisphere.  2nd ed. (2009, 8 vols.)

Historical Maps and Atlases

Try Library of Congress subject headings using Omni, Browse search:

• civilization medieval maps
• classical geography maps
• geography ancient maps
• history ancient maps

The Toronto Public Library (TPL) has ongoing subscriptions to many biographical resources as well other dictionaries and encyclopedias that are not available at TMU. Many of the resources are located at the Toronto Reference Library situated just north of Bloor Street on Yonge Street.