Spanish 410: Gender, Politics, and Current Events in Latin America
Background Information for Class Units
For all units:
Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. 5 vols.
Ref. [q.] F1406 .E53 1996
Magill's Cinema Annual. 1982-
Ref. PN1993.45 .M35
Encyclopedia of Latin American Literature.
Ref. [q.] PQ7081.A1 E56 1997
Online:
Britannica Online
The electronic version of the classic reference work. You can either search for terms or browse the alphabetical list of entries. View the entries from the Encyclopaedia Britannica rather than the Britannica Student Encyclopedia, as the latter is written for elementary and high school students.
Literature Resource Center.
Use the Author search or the Advanced search. The title search doesn't always find everything you might want to see. In addition to biographical information, includes material from Contemporary Authors, the Dictionary of Literary Biography series, Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, and more.
Latinoamérica Celebra a sus Héroes
Encyclopedia of Religion. 15 vols.
Ref. [q.] BL31 .E46 2005
The New Catholic Encyclopedia. 15 vols.
Ref. [q.] BX841 .N44 2003
Biographical Dictionary of Latin American and Caribbean Political Leaders.
Ref. F1414.2 .B48 1988
Biography and Genealogy Master
Index.
"A comprehensive index to nearly 12 million biographical sketches in more than 2700 volumes and editions of current and retrospective reference books, covering both contemporary and historical figures throughout the world." Available electronically for Lawrence campus researchers.
For general biographical works, try a search in LUCIA like this Keyword Anywhere search for "latin america*" and biograph* and see what you find. Click on the links for individual titles. This will show you the full record for the item, and is a good way to discover other words and subject headings to search.
To find biographical books about a certain person, search in LUCIA, for the person using the Subject begins with option, with the last name first for standard western names. Browse through the subject headings to find the subheading which corresponds to your specific interests. Be alert when searching non-western names or names of rulers, as you may need to use varying forms of these names. Other historical figures may be listed in some sources by both a popular (for example, Che Guevara) and one or more official names (Ernesto Guevara, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna). Many times, LUCIA has cross-references for these.
For autobiographical books by and about a certain person, search in LUCIA for persons as Author.
Be sure to consult the library's guide on Biographical Information for further ideas and information.
La Política y el Trasvestismo
Gay Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia.
Ref. HQ75.13 .G37 2000
Encyclopedia of Homosexuality. 2 vols.
Ref. HQ76.25 .E53 1990
A Subject search for homosexuality will locate general works. The subject headings will also be broken down further by geographical regions, like homosexuality -- cuba.
Mujeres: El Cuerpo Político y la Cocina
Gender in Latin America.
HQ1075.5 .L29 C48 2003
Encyclopedia of Women and Gender. 2 vols.
Ref. [q] HQ1115 .E43 2001
Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's
Issues and Knowledge. 4 vols.
Ref. [q.] HQ1115 .R69 2000
Spanish American Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book.
Ref. Z1609.L7 S6 1990
A Subject search for sex role will locate general works. The subject headings will also be broken down further by geographical regions, like sex role -- latin american or sex role -- mexico. Another Subject search to try is women -- latin american.
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Finding Books
To find items owned by the library, search LUCIA. Try a Subject begins with search, for example, latin america. LUCIA will list other subject headings (and subheadings) which may be of interest. Some of these include:
- Latin America -- Civilization
- Latin America -- Civilization -- 20th century
- Latin America -- Social conditions
- Latin America -- Social life and customs
To combine terms for a different kind of search, try a Keyword Anywhere search. LUCIA will look for the terms you specify anywhere in the important areas of the cataloging records, and display a list of those records. Try a search like women and "latin america*". The asterisk acts as a truncation symbol and the quotation marks tell LUCIA to search for a phrase. This way you will find all the phrases starting with latin america: latin america, latin american, latin americans, etc. You might want to try searching for some of the terms you find in the LCSH, or target your keyword search by using the Subject Keyword option. This tells LUCIA to look for the terms in the subject area of the records only.
Books are arranged on the library's shelves by Library of Congress Classification. This is a system that organizes materials by general subjects. Once you have a call number from searching LUCIA, see this guide to call number locations at Mudd and the library floor maps to find out where a book might be on the shelves.
Search LUCIA for materials in our library; try WorldCat to find materials beyond the Mudd. Make sure you've thoroughly searched our library before going to WorldCat. See a reference librarian if you need help.
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Finding Articles
The best index to use will depend on your topic. Be sure to check the Electronic Resources page for other options. Two of our resources, JSTOR and Project MUSE provide complete full text. Some of our indexes include the following:
Essential Indexes: these should be among your starting points for finding advanced materials.
Handbook of Latin American Studies.
Begun in 1935, in 1964 it was divided into two volumes, one covering the social sciences and one the humanities, including literary studies. A Web-based version of future volumes of the
Handbook is available from the Library of Congress; see this page for details on dates and content.
Ref. Z1605 .H23
MLA International Bibliography. 1963-
A leading source for the field of literary studies. Wide ranging index to just about anything of a scholarly nature related to literature and language.
General and Multidisciplinary Indexes: include citations and some full text of materials from a broad variety of fields including literature and history. Some include current news articles.
EBSCOhost.
Follow the link for EBSCOhost Web. EBSCOhost provides a single Web source for multiple databases; you might want to select the Academic Search Elite. Contains broad and specialized coverage of academic and general periodicals. Use the Go or Back button on your browser after exiting EBSCOhost to leave the system.
Expanded Academic ASAP.
Broad coverage of academic periodicals. Includes full text of some articles.
Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life.
The most important indexes to the scholarly literature of history, in books and proceedings as well as journals. Both include short summaries of the works indexed. America: History and Life includes material on the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Historical Abstracts indexes material on world history, including African, Asian, Latin American and European history, from 1450 to the present. Use the Advanced Search feature for both.
Current News Sources: include citations and some full text.
Finding News Information
From the librarians here at Lawrence. Includes links to many newspapers on the Web, and to electronic news source subscriptions. You might be particularly interested in Newslink, which provides links to newspaper websites by country.
Lexis/Nexis Academic: News
Includes national and international news sources, with coverage going back as far as ten years as well as up-to-the minute news wires.
Once you have a citation for an article on your topic, look in LUCIA for the title of the journal or newspaper to see if the library owns it. You should also search BESS, an automated search of the library's fulltext databases, for electronic copies of articles.
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Web Resources
Internet Resources for Spanish
From the librarians.
Lawrence University: Spanish Department
News and information from your professors.
Voice of the Shuttle.
One of the most widely used sources for information on the humanities and literatures.
Of course, there are many more web resources available that might be useful in your research. You might want to try looking at sources that select the best of the Web, like these:
It's important to think carefully about any information you find in any format, and to evaluate resources for their accuracy, applicability, and so forth. Evaluation of web resources is especially important. You may want to consult this guide to Evaluating Internet Resources, or this bibliography on Evaluation of Information Sources. You can often learn a lot about a page (and a site) by parsing the URL.
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Searching for Current Spanish Websites
Countries and Codes
To locate current web sites from Spanish-speaking countries, you will need to know two things:
- the name or names of countries in which Spanish is spoken
- the country code used for web sites from that country
Now that you have the name of a country, you can look up the country code. The reason you need this code, by the way, is so that when you search the web following the instructions below, you can limit your searching sites from the country in which you are interested. The country code is part of the URL--the Uniform Resource Locator--which is a code assigned to each and every Internet resource. You can look up more country codes on the site for IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. This provides very detailed information for the truly committed; a list of country names in English is available, alphabetized by country name.
Performing Your Search
Now that you have the country code for the area you are researching, you can search the internet. What you will do is combine search terms with the country codes. Different search engines do this in different ways.
Google Advanced Search
When you go to the Google Advanced Search page you will be given a form that allows you several search options. Type in the words or phrases you want to look for, then include the two-letter country code in the Domains search. Then click on the Google Search button on the top of the page. Again, keep Spanish spellings, vocabulary, and false cognates in mind when entering search terms.
Google also has a very nice Language Tools page, which allows you to search for pages in specific languages no matter what the country might be. The Language Tools page also has a basic translator, an option to reset the default language, and Googles in other countries.
Yahoo!
The Yahoo! Advanced Web Search lets you search for words or phrases limited by site and domain. I prefer the Yahoo! Advanced Web Search to the simple Yahoo! search to locate material by country of origin. Keep all the
spelling and vocabulary complications in mind, as always.
Versions of Yahoo! for Argentina, Mexico, and Spain are available, as well as a version of U.S. Yahoo! in Spanish with links to more countries. All contain extremely helpful links to many web-based resources including newspapers and current magazines under the link for News and Media. Links for Government and Society and Culture are also interesting. Be sure to check the list of countries included on the Yahoo! Regional: Countries page for links to even more Spanish-speaking countries.
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Style Manuals
Academic Citation and Writing
Style manuals of the humanities, physical sciences, and the social sciences in the Seeley G. Mudd Library.
Citing Electronic Documents
This page provides guidance on citing electronic documents and links to
other guides, some on specific styles of documentation.
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers.
The guide for any academic papers written in the literatures and languages.
RRef. LB2369 .G53 2003
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About Research on Current Events in Latin America
Material related to the topic of this course will be drawn from many fields besides the languages and literatures; be prepared to look at materials from history, international relations, political science, religious studies, and cultural studies, just to name a few. In addition to consulting catalogs and indexes, be sure to look at bibliographies supplied at the end of relevant articles, chapters, and books, and to search library catalogs for book-length bibliographies.
Your sources must be fully documented in any written work you produce. It may help to look at the information on style before you start your research, so that you will have all the required documentation at hand when you need it. Then as you write, go back to the resources on style for details on the exact format of your citations.
The sources listed in this guide were chosen for the broad coverage they provide. Direct links are provided to Internet resources and searchable databases, as well as links to LUCIA, the library's online catalog. Be sure to check the library's Electronic Resources page regularly to see new databases and indexes; some of these will only be available to users on the Lawrence campus. Also, you may want to take a look at guides on related topics from the Library Research Guides page.
Evaluating the resources you find is an essential part of the research process. See this guide to hints on evaluation of books and articles and this guide to evaluating Internet resources.
As always, if you have any questions be sure to ask a Reference Librarian.
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Definitions of terms and abbreviations:
Ref. = Reference collection, first floor
RRef.= Ready Reference, shelves behind the reference desk
Periodicals = Level A
GovDoc = U.S. Government Documents, second floor
Reference Indexes = Alphabetically arranged at the end of the reference collection
Microform Area = Reading room east of the reference desk, near microform drawers
q. = Oversized books: interfiled in reference and scores; at end of classes in other collections
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