Archives and Special Collections

Special Collections was established to help support the learning and teaching needs and facilitate the scholarly, research and creative activities of the TMU community by acquiring and preserving photography, film and cultural history objects. We have a particular responsibility to help students and staff gain access to objects in niche subject areas and aid them in the interpretation of those objects. The Archives serves as the institutional memory of the TMU community. The Archives appraises, preserves, and makes accessible a broad range of primary source materials which provide administrative, academic, fiscal, legal, social, and cultural record of Toronto Metropolitan University.

Our main goal for the Fashion Research Collection (FRC) is to expand the archive by adopting these principles to further build the collection as a place that includes the perspectives and histories of diverse groups. In support of this goal, we encourage research and conversations from our students, faculty, visiting scholars, and community that promote an inclusive, sustainable and decolonized fashion system.

The RYERSON IMAGE CENTRE (RIC) exists for the research, teaching and exhibition of photography and related media. We are an active partner within the academic fabric of Toronto Metropolitan University, the cultural network of greater Toronto, and the national and international artistic community. We develop rigorous yet inclusive programs for students, faculty, artists, researchers and curators, as well as the general public. we maintain a collection of photography spanning the medium’s history, as well as several artist and journalism archives—including the renowned Black Star Collection of twentieth-century photoreportage.

The Archives of Ontario has created a number of research tools, databases and catalogues of information to help you in your research. Collections include immigration records, maps, photographs, aerial photographs, patents and blueprints.

We are Canada's LGBTQ2+ Archive. We collect and maintain collections related to LGBTQ2+ life in Canada, including books, archival papers, artifacts, photographs, and art. Founded in 1973, we have grown to become the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archive in the world.

The Toronto Archives is the municipal archives for the city. There are over one million photographs of Toronto in our collection, as well as tens of thousands of maps, plans and architectural drawings. Browse a complete list of all the digitized photographs, in the archives, arranged by series.

The Diocesan Archives provides safe, secure and controlled storage for non-current parish records, including baptism, marriage and burial records, proof of status for legal purposes as well as genealogical purposes. Archives also holds the parish history files and frequently receives calls from parishioners seeking historical information for events such as special anniversaries. Photographs and architectural drawings may also be requested and borrowed for displays.

Established in 1973, the Ontario Jewish Archives, Blankenstein Family Heritage Centre, a department of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, acquires, preserves and makes available documentary sources related to Ontario's Jewish community.

Our office documents the life and work of the Presbyterian Chuch in Canada by acquiring and preserving records of enduring evidential and historical value to the Church. Our holdings consist of over 3,500 square feet of textual records, 30,000 photographs, hundreds of architectural plans, thousands of hours of audio-visual recordings, and well over a million pages on microfilm. The oldest item in the Archives dates from 1638.

For researchers and professionals the Arts Department on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library offers numerous primary source materials. Unique collections about people and organizations in Canadian and international theatre. Printed ephemera including manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, theatre programs, stage designs, and promptbooks. A small number of collections relating to Canadian dance, music and film. You may view the archival collections in the Marilyn & Charles Baillie Special Collections Centre on the 5th floor of the Toronto Reference Library.

Toronto is home to 20 percent of Canada’s immigrants. Almost half of Toronto’s population was born outside of Canada and over 180 languages and dialects are spoken throughout the city. As one of the most multicultural cities in the world, immigration has been integral to Toronto’s past and present. While a number of organizations in Toronto have done much work to preserve and document this history, Toronto currently does not have a go-to destination where the public can discover and interact with this wealth of stories. The city needs a cultural institution that strengthens our understanding of immigration history through innovation in interpretation and public engagement. Working with our partners, the Toronto Ward Museum will bring the city’s untold history to life, and engage visitors and locals alike in a conversation about pluralism and what it means for our communities.

The United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, includes the General Council Archives and the Ontario Regional Council Archives serving Canadian Shield Regional Council, Antler River Watershed Regional Council, Western Ontario Waterways Regional Council, Horseshoe Falls Regional Council, Shining Waters Regional Council, East Central Ontario Regional Council and parts of Eastern Ontario Outaouais. The Archives holds the records in a variety of formats of the General Council Office and those of the Regions, Communities of Faith, former Conferences and presbyteries of the Central Ontario region.

Founded in 1982, the mandate of the original Archives for the History of Canadian Psychiatry and Mental Health Services was to preserve, and make available for study, material concerning the history and development of psychiatry including addictions and other mental health services in Canada, especially Ontario. In 2000, that original mandate was broadened towards a phased evolution as the Corporate (non-clinical/patient) Archives for the permanent operational and administrative records of CAMH.

The West Toronto Junction Historical Society is a non-profit, charitable, volunteer organization. It was formed in 1980 by a group of local residents with the active support of the City of Toronto Planning and Development Department and Councillor David White. It was then incorporated in 1981 as an affiliate of the Ontario Historical Society.

Founded in 1888, The Ontario Historical Society is a non-profit corporation and registered charity; a non-government group bringing together people of all ages, all walks of life and all cultural backgrounds interested in preserving some aspect of Ontario’s history.

Part of Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell’s Witchcraft Collection contains over 3,000 titles documenting the history of the Inquisition and the persecution of witchcraft, primarily in Europe.

These open access sources are readily available to all -- without fees or subscriptions. Links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.

The Internet Modern History Sourcebook is one of a series of history primary sourcebooks. It is intended to serve the needs of teachers and students in college survey courses in modern European history and American history, as well as in modern Western Civilization and World Cultures. Although this part of the Internet History Sourcebooks Project began as a way to access texts that were already available on the Internet, it now contains hundreds of texts made available locally.

The Internet Medieval Sourcebook is organized as three main index pages, with a number of supplementary indices. Each individual section is still large - an organizational goal here is to avoid incessant "clicking" to get between pages and to information.

Google Arts & Culture features content from over 1000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

Founded in 2008, HathiTrust is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.

Search the image collections held by Library and Archives Canada. Searches can be narrowed down by type (architectural drawings, art, maps, objects, photographs, and stamps).

Access online collections: view maps & photographs; read letters, diaries & newspapers; hear personal accounts of events; listen to sound recordings & watch historic films.

Links to digitized photograph collections held by the US National Archives.

NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship) is a scholarly organization devoted to forging links between the material archive of the nineteenth century and the digital research environment of the twenty-first. Our activities are driven by three primary goals:

to serve as a peer-reviewing body for digital work in the long 19th-century (1770-1920), British and American;
to support scholars’ priorities and best practices in the creation of digital research materials;
to develop software tools for new and traditional forms of research and critical analysis.

The Victorian Web originated in hypermedia environments (Intermedia, Storyspace) that existed long before the World Wide Web. One of the oldest academic and scholarly websites, it entered the Internet in 1994. The Victorian Web takes an approach that differs markedly from many Internet projects. The Victorian Web resents its images and documents, including entire books, as nodes in a network of complex connections. In other words, it emphasizes the link rather than the search tool (though it has one) and presents information linked to other information rather than atomized and isolated