ONLINE RESOURCES FOR LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, SPANISH, AND PORTUGUESE (LASP):

  1. Full-text Retrieval of Scholarly Journal Articles and Newspaper/News Magazine Articles (5)
  2. Full-text Retrievel of Books (5)
  3. Library Catalogs (5)
  4. Periodical Literature Indexes (3)

A. FULL-TEXT RETRIEVAL OF ARTICLES FROM SCHOLARLY JOURNALS, NEWSPAPERS, AND NEWS MAGAZINES

One of the most interesting (and amazing) developments related to "virtual" libraries is the growth of online, full-text retrieval sites for articles from scholarly journals and newspapers. Three sites sites that cover more and more titles related to or from Latin America, Spanish, and Portuguese are JSTOR (U. of Michigan), Project Muse (Johns Hopkins), and UTLANIC-Journals (University of Texas Latin American Network Information Center). Full-text retrieval allows library users (based on subscription rates the library pays) to read and print articles from current and past issues of scholarly journals.

Examine these web sites:

  1. JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/cgi-bin/jstor/gensearch
  2. Project Muse at http://muse.jhu.edu/. Each offers a world of convenience and efficiency in doing research.
  3. UTLANIC-Journals at http://www1.lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/journals/

Full-text retrieval of newspaper and news magazine articles from Latin America and all countries of the world are:

  1. Newslink at http://newslink.org/
  2. UTLANIC-Newspapers/Magazines at http://info.lanic.utexas.edu/subject/media/

B. FULL-TEXT RETRIEVEL OF BOOKS

  1. The main commercial resource for books in English is netLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com/library_home_page.asp). Since it is a subscription vendor (library pays subscription), it offers very recent imprints. Although its titles are still in copyright, an institutional subscription allows photocopying of material. One can search for books by publisher and thereby read the latest releases from, for example, the University of California Press, other university presses, or any of numerous major and minor commercial research/academic publishers. A keyword search using "Brazil" brings up 35 electronic books.
  2. For e-books in Spanish, the premier source is the Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes (http://cervantesvirtual.com/index.shtml). Not a commercial venture but a cooperative of Spanish and Spanish American university and national libraries, it offers imprints that are out of copyright. Thereby it is an extraordinary resource for accessing classic, standard works, especially for Spain, Catalonia, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico.

For e-texts in other languages, two quite extensive sites are:

  1. University of Virginia Electronic Text Center. Approximately 70,000 on- and off-line humanities texts in 13 languages, with more than 350,000 related images (book illustrations, covers, manuscripts, newspaper pages, page images of Special Collections books, museum objects, etc.) http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/uvaonline.html
  2. Biblioteche virtuali in altre lingue=Virtual Libraries in Other (non-Italian) Languages. This Italian site allows one to access the sites of virtual, full-text libraries in Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, etc. at http://www.alice.it/virtual/net.vir/vnetext.htm. Italian itself is at http://www.alice.it/virtual/net.vir/vnetita.htm
  3. Your Dictionary is a site at http://www.yourdictionary.com/ that offers full-text retrieval of dictionaries for all languages of the world.

C. LIBRARY CATALOGS

Often library users have difficulty in distinguishing between the purpose of a library catalog and that of a periodical literature index. This confusion can be compounded when these resources are online.

The basic distinction is that a catalog tells you that a library (or library system) holds an item--it owns it. A periodical literature index indicates that a particular article or book exists and how and when it was published.

The five basic online catalogs that researchers should know are: OSCAR, OhioLINK, WorldCat, RLIN (Research Libraries Information Network), and Libweb (Library Catalog Web). For researchers in Latin American Studies, Spanish, and Portuguese (LASP), the two key online indexes are HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index) and the Handbook of Latin American Studies.

  1. OSCAR (http://library.ohio-state.edu/search) is the catalog of holdings at OSU.
  2. OhioLINK (http://olc1.ohiolink.edu/search) is the catalog and interlibrary loan (ILL) service of 80 academic libraries in the state of Ohio with more than 30 million holdings. It is the most advanced unified academic library catalog and online ILL service in the world, holding a vanguard position in the development of virtual libraries.

You can toggle (switch) between OSCAR and OhioLINK screens. If you do not find an item in the former, you can hit the blue "OhioLINK catalog" button in the upper right of the screen and immediately move there. From OhioLINK you can go back to OSCAR by hitting the "return home" button, also in the upper right hand corner.

To obtain a book or article through OhioLINK, click on the "request this item" phrase. Such requests can also be done in OSCAR. In your request you can specify if you want the item delivered to a particular library on campus or to your office.

In searching by subject, if no items come up, be sure to then change your strategy to keyword searching. To change from subject to keyword searching (or vice-versa), pull down the menu of search options in the upper left of the screen. Using a combined strategy of keyword and subject searching is a crucial tactic in using any database, allowing you to obtain a full range of relevant materials within a specific to wider focus.

  1. WorldCat and 4. RLIN are national library catalogs. The former now registers over 50 million items in academic and public libraries. To use WorldCat and RLIN, go to the Libraries' homepage, http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/. From there, enter the section entitled "additional catalogs and library web sites." Go to the bottom of the screen, and there you will find links to WorldCat and RLIN.
Neither of these sites has a "request item" option. To obtain an item from them through ILL, go to the Libraries' online ILL request form at http://library.ohio-state.edu/screens/menuill.html. You will be notified by e-mail when the item arrives.

Two basic differences between WorldCat and RLIN are that the former is both national and international, often showing holdings at libraries in Europe and some other regions. For RLIN a principal advantage is its holdings of rare items and of unique editions.

  1. Libweb (its link is just below the one for RLIN) connects a user to library catalogs around the world, http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Libweb/. Through it one can search the catalogs of academic and national libraries in Mexico, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, Britain, etc. A very interesting national catalog is that of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, OPALE-Plus, which often provides biographical data with author entries, http://www.bnf.fr/

D. PERIODICAL LITERATURE INDEXES

  1. HAPI is an index of periodical articles published on Latin America in the US, Latin America, and other parts of the world. To use it, go to the Libraries homepage and enter the "titles" section, http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/Tools/titles.php, Under "other research tools." Click on the "H" section. HAPI indexes articles from 1969 to the present. To see a list of the journals indexed in HAPI, push the "journals" button at the top of the screen.
  2. The Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) is a much larger, varied, and older database (maintained by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress). It is one of the most remarkable research resources in foreign area studies. It indexes books and articles on Latin America, in any language, that have been published since 1935 in the US, Latin America, and other countries. Not only does it index, but it also abstracts. A digest of a publication's contents accompanies each book and article. The digest is always in English so that items in languages one does not read are basically accessible. To use it, go to the Libraries homepage and enter the "titles" section, http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/Tools/titles.php. Under "other research tools." Click on the "H" section for the HLAS.
  3. La bibliografia de la literature espanola covers the literature of Spain for all periods. It is relevant to Latin America for the colonial Spanish American period. To use it, go to the Libraries homepage and enter the "titles" section, http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/Tools/titles.php. Under "other research tools." Click on the "B" section for the Bibliografia

SUMMARY

We want to work so that anyone studying or researching at OSU in Latin American Studies, Spanish, and Portuguese is basically literate in the key online research resources for the field. Reviewing, therefore, there are:

Full-text retrieval of articles:

  1. JSTOR
  2. Project Muse
  3. UTLANIC-Journals
  4. Newslink
  5. UTLANIC-Newspapers/Magazines

Full-text retrieval of books:

  1. netLibrary
  2. Biblioteca Cervantes
  3. University of Virginia Electronic Text Center
  4. Biblioteche virtuali in altre lingue
  5. Your Dictionary

Catalogs

  1. OSCAR
  2. OhioLINK
  3. WorldfCat
  4. RLIN
  5. Libweb

Indexes

  1. HAPI
  2. HLAS
  3. BLE
There is a site that consolidates most of these resources for you in one place, the LAT web site, http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/latweb/LATHOME.HTML. By going to it, you will find not only many of the above resources, but an array of others.

-- Ted Riedinger, Professor & Head, LAT
riedinger.4@osu.edu

rev/exp January, 2003