History, Africa

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 ...

SEARCH TIPS

Be specific.  If you want to information related to a topic in a specific geographical entity such as a country (eg. Kenya), region (eg. Africa, North; Horn of Africa) or linguistic groups (eg. Africa, French-speaking), use the specific name or phrase (Kenya, "Africa North", "Horn of Africa", "Africa French-speaking") rather than the more general term Africa. Use these in conjunction with topical keywords such as: history, women, social conditions, politics.

Avoid using as a keyword African by itself as many of the returns will be for African American topics. Phrases such as "South African" "East African" "Central African" "African diaspora" or "African languages" may all be more useful. Once you find a good item, look at the complete catalogue record in order to find the Library of Congress subject headings that are assigned to the item and use these and/or similar headings to find relevant works.

Try using truncated searches that use the *[asterisk] wildcard.  For example, egypt* will find the country name Egypt, as well as words beginning with the five letters egypt. This search will include Egypt's, Egypte, Egyptian, Egyptians, Egyptologist, and, Egyptology..

If searching for a geographic entity that has changed names, use the Boolean operator OR to search for variant names in one search. (eg. Tanzania OR Tanganyika, Madagascar OR "Malagasy republic", Zimbabwe OR Rhodesia)

Biographical information

Consider these resources:

• Current Biography (1941-2015) The Toronto Public Library has more recent volumes of this title.
• Dictionary of African Biography (2012, 6 vols.) Available at the Toronto Public Library

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.

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 etiher dictionaries, or, encyclopedias

Example Subject contains searches:

• africa encyclopedias
• africa dictionaries
• africa biography dictionaries
• slavery encyclopedias
• biography dictionaries

Maps and Atlases

Try Omni Browse Search, and Library of Congress Subject Heading:

General World Atlases: atlases

The David Rumsey Map Collection contains historical maps including many of Africa or specific countries or regions of Africa

The Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library is digitizing many of the 200,000 maps in the collection. Search digital content under the Collections tab.

Many digitization initiatives are making books and magazines that are no longer protected by copyright available to new generations of researchers. Some creators are publishing their works in open access databases or under a Creative Commons license that permits free access to their research.

Many of these open access books and magazines are indexed in the TMU Libraries Omni Search.

For specific databases, consider:

The Internet Archive This venture includes books, movies, music and more.

Hathi Trust Digital Library Much of the content is available to all researchers. Some content is restricted to partner institutions and not available to the TMU community.

Google Books In addition to searching for works in the public domain no longer protected by copyright, this site may allow you to preview small amounts of text from books that are still protected by copyright. Look for the complete works in the TMU Libraries Omni or try the Toronto Public Library.