History 14 : Modern Latin America
Fall 2006
GENERAL SOURCES | ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES, ETC. | BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND INDEXES | A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES | WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
GENERAL SOURCES
The Five-College
Library Catalog is a good place to start library research. You can search for books, journals, and moving pictures in all Five Colleges, or you can limit the search to Amherst's holdings. All books are listed by their AUTHORS, TITLES, and SUBJECTS, and you can also search by KEYWORD.
KEYWORD searching is not likely to yield a comprehensive list of books on any particular topic, but it's often a good way to start; you can type in a common language characterization of your topic, say "South American Indians " (use quotation marks around multi-word phrases to invoke exact-phrase searching), then, if you browse through the resulting list, select titles related to your research interests and examine the FULL VIEW catalog record, and note which official subject headings are assigned, you can click on those and do a more thorough SUBJECT search.
SUBJECT searching as such (i.e. 'Subject begins with') requires that you use the exact word or phrase libraries have chosen to describe your topic; for example, libraries list books generally about indigenous peoples of Latin America under Indians of South America. Note that there are geographical and topical subdivisions to this main subject heading (i.e. Indians of South America - Brazil), as under most main headings, and that country names are also usefully searchable (Venezuela - History for instance).
To see if Amherst owns a journal, highlight the 'Journal title keywords' option in the Basic Search screen of the Catalog, then type in the journal's name in quotation marks.
For quick background information, try Britannica Online from any computer on campus; just click
on the colored link.
ENCYCLOPEDIAS, ATLASES
Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture.
N.Y., Scribner's, 1996. 5 volumes.
Short articles, many of which have very brief bibliographies,
on broad and narrow subjects, people, places, events, etc. (Ref F 1406
E53 1996)
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean
Cultures. London & N.Y., Routledge, 2000. 3 volumes.
Brief, alphabetically-arranged entries on topics in popular
culture, people, places, etc. (Ref F 1406 E515 2000)
Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics. Westport
CT, Oryx, 2002.
Short summaries of recent events followed by shorter entries
on individuals, parties, events, etc. (Ref F 1410 E56 2002)
Historical Dictionary of European Imperialism. N.Y.,
Greenwood, 1991.
A one-volume collection of brief entries on places
and people; easy access to background info and fact-checking. (Ref D 217
H57 1991)
Latin American History: A Teaching Atlas. Madison,
University of Wisconsin, 1983.
Dozens of maps illustrating boundaries, trade routes, and
economic and demographic information. (Ref G 1541 S1 L6 1983)
International Historical Statistics: The Americas, 1750-1993.
London, Macmillan, 1998. Fourth Edition.
A compilation of available statistical information on a wide
variety of topics: population, agriculture, trade, education, etc. (Ref
HA 175 M55 1998)
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES, INDEXES, AND DATABASES
Subject bibliographies and indexes, which list
books and/or articles on particular topics, can lead you to substantial
reading lists in your area of research; they are useful even when older
and not including citations to current publications; computerized indexes
enable you to update.
Among many potentially useful printed bibliographies (shelved
on Level 1 of Frost, in the Reference Collection) are Latin America
and the Caribbean: A Critical Guide to Research Sources (Ref F 1408 L387 1992), Latin American Military History (Ref F 1410.5 L38 1992), Latin American Politics: A Historical Bibliography (Ref F 1414.2 .L34 1984), Latin America: A Guide to Economic History, 1830-1930 (Ref HC 125 .L34 1977), Agrarian Reform in Latin America (Ref HD 1333.L29 U58 1974), A Bibliography of United States-Latin American Relations Since
1810 (Ref F 1418 .T69 + supplement), Women in Spanish America (Ref HQ 1460.5 .K55 1977), The Indians of South America: A Bibliography (Ref F 2229 .W45 1987), Liberation Theologies, A Research Guide (Ref BT 83.57 .M87 1991), Afro-Braziliana (Ref F 2659.N4 P67 1978), Research
Guide to Andean History (Ref F 3321 .R47 1981), A Half-Century of Peronism (Ref F 2849 .H66 1993), and Venezuelan History: A Comprehensive Working
Bibliography (Ref F 2308 .L64 1977). To locate topical bibliographies, use
the SUBJECT category in the Library Catalog, guess at KEYWORD(s), and/or
ask at the Reference Desk.
Online indexes are computerized listings of journal articles
and/or books, searchable, usually, by authors, titles, keywords, subjects,
dates, etc. Among several useful indexes, available by clicking here,
are HLAS
Online: Handbook of Latin American Studies, HAPI
(Hispanic American Periodicals Index), Historical
Abstracts, and Academic Search Premier. The last-named, while more general
in its coverage and therefore significantly more selective than the others,
has the advantage of including many electronic, full-text articles.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT JOURNAL ARTICLES
Printed and computerized indexes
and bibliographies provide citations to articles which may or may not
be owned by the Amherst College Library. To find out if and where we have
older issues of journals, you must look up each journal title (not article
titles or authors) in the Library Catalog. Be attentive to volume numbers
and dates which show up onscreen since sometimes we've started or stopped
a subscription in the middle of a run. Some older volumes of journals
may be housed in the Amherst College Depository, an off-campus storage
facility. You can request volumes from the Depository by filling out a
form which pops up when you select ‘Requests’ from the
left side of the Library homepage, then ‘Depository’.
More and more journals are offering full-texts
in electronic form; those we subscribe to are linked to records in the
online Library Catalog and/or you can search for electronic versions using
the Journal
Locator, clickable here and from the box, above right. Also, in online
indexes (like HLAS and HAPI), a button labeled 'AC
Links' permits you to search for electronic versions of articles
you find cited; if the Library does not have access to an electronic version,
'AC Links' will automatically search for a print-format version
in the Library Catalog.
WORLD WIDE WEB RESOURCES
The Library's 'Research and Using the Library' links provide reasonably direct, organized access to Internet resources like library catalogs in the U.S. and abroad, search engines for finding particular sites, and our 'History' and/or 'Spanish' pages can get you to pre-selected, academically-oriented metasites, image collections, etc. One especially recommended site is LANIC, the Latin American Network Information Center at the University of Texas; this is a metasite or selection of links to other websites and databases, adding up to access to a vast amount of information. Remember that the World Wide Web, unlike the Library, is largely un-refereed, that is, some of the information mounted may or may not be well-edited or even legitimate. Be skeptical, and read critically. Who's responsible for the site? What are their sources of information? Where and when was the site produced? Does it seem to be regularly maintained?
Comments regarding this page should be directed to: Michael Kasper