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Digital collections

These digital collections were developed here at the University of Toronto Libraries, in collaboration with university faculty and external partners. This work has often been made possible through the generous support of funding agencies.
Agnes Chamberlin Digital Collection
This collection consists of over three hundred original paintings of Canadian flora and mushrooms by Agnes Chamberlin (1833-1913), dating from the period 1863 to the 1900s, as well as Chamberlin's published works, in all editions, and the original subscription books for the first two editions of Canadian wild flowers.
Anatomia Collection
This collection features approximately 4500 full page plates and other significant illustrations of human anatomy. Each illustration has been fully indexed using medical subject headings (MeSH), and techniques of illustration, artists, and engravers have been identified whenever possible. There are ninety-five individual titles represented, ranging in date from 1522 to 1867.
Armorial Bindings

British Armorial Binding is a comprehensive catalogue of all the coats of arms, crests, and other heraldic devices that have been stamped by British owners on the outer covers of their books, together with the bibliographical sources of the stamps. The database reproduces over 3,300 stamps used between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries, associated with nearly two thousand individual owners.

Canada West

This project begins the process of creating a comprehensive on-line database of popular performance culture in Canada West (now 'southern Ontario') from its formative years prior to Confederation until just after World War One.

Canadian Government Information image

The Canadian Government Information collection contains over 600 archived federal, provincial (Ontario), & municipal (Toronto) government websites. Coverage for select federal sites begins as early as 2007. Special emphasis is placed on capturing official publications & content of local significance. 

Canadian Labour Unions image

A collection of the documents published on the websites of Canada's public sector unions, private sector unions, and labour federations. The collection is national in scope. Most websites include administrative and organizational information, press releases and newsletters, and collective bargaining information (including some collective agreements).

Canadian Local History

The Canadian Local Histories Collection is a compilation of local historical materials held at the University of Toronto. This collection consolidates pamphlets, books and periodicals into a collection of over 65,000 full-text searchable pages of historical material.

The collection is current available on the Internet Archive and the site is available through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Please contact us (https://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/its/get-help) if you need support finding an item within the collection.

Canadian Necrology

The Canadian Necrology database is a unique source of obituary and death information for both prominent and lesser-known Canadians, covering a time span from the late 18th century to 1977. It contains over 20,000 records; the majority come from newspapers such as the Globe and Mail, Toronto Daily Star, Gazette, and Mail and Empire; an additional 4,000 records were compiled by William Henry Pearson (1831-1920), a Toronto resident with a lifetime passion for necrology.

Canadian Pamphlets and Broadsides example
Pre-1930 Canadian pamphlets and broadsides from the collections of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. To date the site contains of 596 broadsides (single sheets, printed on one or both sides) and 594 pamphlet titles which amounts to 21638 page images. Additional titles will be added on a regular basis. The collection includes items printed in Canada, by Canadian authors, or about Canadian subjects, mainly of a non-literary nature. Searching, browsing, full text and images are provided for each document.
Canadian House of Commons floor on March 10, 2938

Canadian Political Parties and Political Interest Groups archives the websites of all of the national Canadian political parties, and a number of special interest groups across the political spectrum.

Canadian Printer and Publisher
Canadian Printer and Publisher, which began in 1892 and is still being published today by Rogers Media under the title Canadian Printer Magazine, is the national organ of the printing industry in Canada. It documents the growth and evolution of the trade, during a period of continuous technological and commercial innovation, beginning in the period when machine composition was taking over from hand composition in the 1890s.
The Classics Department Papyrus Collection

The Classics Department Papyrus Collection at Fisher consists of three inventory types: the Paper Towel (PT) Inventory from Egypt; the Oxford University Gazette (OUG) Inventory, and the Rostovzteff-Welles (RW) Inventory

IIIF icon

Collections U of T is the University of Toronto Libraries' repository for selected digitized collections from special collections and archives. It provides open access to these digital collections through the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) and standard metadata formats.

Collections U of T is supported by Information Technology Services (ITS). For more information, contact: digitalinitiatives@library.utoronto.ca

DEEDS (Documents of Early England Data Set)

In the early stages more than 1,500 private charters of the Great Cartulary of the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, with particular reference to the County of Essex, were converted into electronic format. The wide range of computer-based analyses conducted on these charters allowed us to create an extensive research database containing information about personal names, relationships, occupations, properties both tangible and intangible, places and, where availble, dates which was easily accessible to the researcher.

The Dictionary of Old English image

The Dictionary of Old English (DOE) defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language, using twenty-first century technology. The DOE complements the Middle English Dictionary (which covers the period C.E. 1100-1500) and the Oxford English Dictionary, the three together providing a full description of the vocabulary of English. 

Discover Archives

Discover Archives is a shared portal for exploring archival holdings at the University of Toronto and its federated colleges. Visit the site today to search and browse descriptions of archival material related to the University of Toronto's history, as well as records from private individuals, families, businesses, and organizations.

The site includes a broad range of archival descriptions. You can browse the finding aids and search across the many archival descriptions that provide access to the documentary heritage of the University of Toronto and its community.

Discovery and Early Development of Insulin photo
This site documents the initial period of the discovery and development of insulin, 1920-1925, here at the University of Toronto. It presents over seven thousand page images reproducing original documents ranging from laboratory notebooks and charts, correspondence, writings, and published papers to photographs, awards, clippings, scrapbooks, printed ephemera and artifacts.
The Exhibition & Reception of American Popular Film in Canada image

Drawing from newspapers and periodicals, local histories, and archival documents, this site will begin the process of creating a comprehensive database of American film in Canada during the 20th Century.

FADIS - (Federated Academic Digital Imaging System) logo
FADIS (Federated Academic Digital Imaging System) is an art and architecture repository and teaching tool consisting of over 250,000 digital images, videos and audio files with accompanying meta data for private study and research. Courseware tools include the creation of lecture carousels with image notes, multiple image display options for in class teaching, syllabus information, file sharing and online quizzes. Students can also create study and presentation "virtual" carousels, download lecture carousels as PDF, search and browse from the growing collection of art history. Faculty and students can create an account using Web Login. FADIS is a consortium of many university art departments. External departments interested in using FADIS to manage digital images should contact fadis@library.utoronto.ca
Thomas Fisher Collection of Manuscript Fragments photo

Collection of 190 pieces of vellum in Greek and Latin illustrating the history and development of handwriting from the 4th century until the end of the Middle Ages. 

Fisher Manuscripts

A collection of digitized manuscripts from Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, representing a range of disciplines including history, theology, literature, philosophy, science, and medicine and in languages as diverse as Arabic, English, French, Ge'ez, German, Hebrew, Latin, and Persian

French Paleography - detail manuscript letter

Paleography is the history and study of handwriting. Old scripts can be very beautiful, but sometimes difficult to read. This site presents over 100 carefully selected French manuscripts written between 1300 and 1700, with tools for deciphering them and learning about their social, cultural, and institutional settings.

G8 icon
G7/8 summit and ministerial meeting documents from 1975 to present; G7-related news articles; G7/8-related scholarly articles. Developed together with the University of Toronto G8 Research Group, under the direction of Prof. John Kirton.
Heritage U of T: Our Ongoing History in Images, Text, and Rich Media

Heritage U of T is a digital repository of archival records, photographs, books, maps, drawings, and sound and moving image files chronicling the University of Toronto's rich history from its founding, through both world wars, to the present. This site is a tri-campus initiativeby the University of Toronto Libraries' Information Technology Services, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University Archives and Records Management Services, U of T Mississauga Library, and U of T Scarborough Library. 

Italian Paleography - detail manuscript

The Italian Paleography digital resource provides pedagogical tools for the study of Italian vernacular handwriting from 1100 to 1700 and features 102 digitized manuscripts. Sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the resource was collaboratively created by the Newberry Library, UTL’s Information Technology Services department, and St. Louis University’s Walter J. Ong S.J. Center for Digital Humanities

ITER: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance logo

Iter, meaning a journey or a path in Latin, is a not-for-profit partnership dedicated to the advancement of learning in the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700) through the development and distribution of online resources.

Jackson Bibliography of Romantic Poetry
This bibliography is a work in progress that aims eventually to provide descriptions of all the volumes of verse in English that were published from 1770 to 1835. Phase I presents the years from 1798 to 1835 and includes 17,160 entries. Phase II will add the years from 1770 to 1797. The bibliography includes books that appeared for the first time in 1770 or later, with a minimum size of ten pages. The inclusion of books that mix prose and verse depends on their containing at least ten pages of verse that was not published before 1770.
The Juba Project: Early Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain image

THE JUBA PROJECT's Early Blackface Minstrelsy in Britain Website draws together a range of documentation into a database that allows the visitor to access information on the individuals and troupes who toured in Britain during these years, on the venues in which they appeared, and on individual events--to trace the movements of performers, and to locate documentary information on these touring, itinerant professionals. 

Lexicons of Early Modern English
LEME searches and displays word-entries from monolingual English dictionaries, bilingual lexicons, technical vocabularies, and other encyclopedic-lexical works, 1480-1702. Texts of word-entries whose headword (source) or explanation (target) language is English tell us what speakers of English thought about their tongue in the period. Edited by Prof. Ian Lancashire, this publication contains over half a million word entries in 150 searchable lexicons, supported by extensive primary and secondary bibliographies.
The Mayors and Sheriffs  of London 1190–1558
This database currently includes the mayors, sheriffs, and wardens of the City of London 1190–1558: their names, terms of office, and company (in the early years, craft/trade guild) membership or occupation. The database will gradually be expanded to include the years from 1559 to the present. Still later additions may include short biographies of the better-known mayors and sheriffs, and/or references or links to existing biographical sources.
Medici Archive Project: Documentary Sources for the Arts and Humanities in the M
This evaluation version of MAP's Documentary Sources database, developed by the Medici Archive Project and published on the web by the University of Toronto Libraries, currently describes 200 volumes of documents in the Medici Granducal Archive (Archivio Mediceo del Principato), with document records for approximately 10,000 letters and biographical records for approximately 11,000 people. The Medici Archive Project's research team, at work in the Florentine National Archive (Archivio di Stato di Firenze), will be updating this data regularly.
Mexican Political Pamphlets, 1808-1832
One of the most important research collections pertaining to the independence movement in Mexico, 1789-1828, compiled by the late Prof. James McKegney. The collection contains a bibliographic database of more than 11,000 citations and over 1,150 digital copies of pamphlets listed in the database. This database and the accompanying documents are one of the most important archival sources in the world for the study of the political, social and cultural aspects of the independence movement in Mexico. This collection is currently available through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Please contact us (https://onesearch.library.utoronto.ca/its/get-help) if you need support finding an item within the collection.
Music Library Collection

Archival Collections documenting manuscripts, correspondence, programs, photographs and recordings of composers and performers associated with the University and the city.

Patent Medicine Collection

The Patent Medicine collection consists of a wide range of materials documenting the patent medicine industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s and 1970s.

REED Patrons and Performances image
Professional performers of all kinds in England and Wales toured to provincial towns, monasteries and private residences before 1642. The REED Patrons and Performances Web Site is a searchable database about professional performers on tour in the provinces – their patrons, the performance venues they used and the routes they took across the kingdom.
Representative Poetry Online
Representative Poetry Online includes 4,079 English poems by 618 poets from Caedmon, in the Old English period, to the work of living poets today. It is based on Representative Poetry, established by Professor W. J. Alexander of University College, University of Toronto, in 1912 and used in the English Department at the University until the late 1960s. Its electronic founder and editor since 1994 is Ian Lancashire, who is a member of the Department of English, University of Toronto.
Roberts Book Collection
Browse from over 200,000 digitized Books from Robarts Library hosted on the Internet Archive.
Scott Carter Collection

A collection of drawings, letters and ephemera related to the work of Alexander Scott Carter. Carter was born in 1881 in England and studied art and architecture there before coming to Toronto. He became a member of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and specialized in architectural decoration and heraldic ornament. His work includes designing various war memorials, statues, bookplates and arms for Toronto individuals and institutions.

Soviet Samizdat Periodicals: Uncensored Texts of the Late Soviet Era
Soviet Samizdat Periodicals is a database of information about editions of classic Soviet samizdat, 1956-1986. The Database includes approximately 300 titles, representing all known types of samizdat periodical editions from this late Soviet era, including human rights bulletins, poetry anthologies, rock zines, religious and national editions.
Toronto Korean Language Newspapers
This page contains two significant Toronto Korean-language newspapers: The Minjoong Shinmoon (Jan. 1982; Jan. 1989 - Mar. 1993) and The New Korea Times (May 1982 - May 2003). The collection features approximately 7,420 pages. This digitization project was an international collaborative project funded by the National Institute of Korean History.
University of Toronto Archives Online thumbnail

An online repository of over 20,000 select items from the collections held by the University of Toronto Archives & Records Management Services (UTARMS). 

Wenceslaus Hollar Digital Collection
This digital collection features over 2500 of the prints of Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677), a great master of the art of etching. The lion’s share of Hollar’s work was produced in and about his adopted England, but his artistic interest was broad ranging and the site also includes religious and historical prints, maps, portraits, costumes, and natural history.