Hispanic American Periodicals Index Guide

Index Coverage:

The online version of the Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) currently covers the years 1970 to the present. HAPI Online includes citations to journal articles, book reviews, bibliographies and original literary works from approximately 400 social science and humanities journals published around the world which regularly contain information on Latin America. Journals published in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean area are fully indexed. Items from journals published in other countries are cited only if they relate to Latin America or Hispanics in the United States. HAPI is updated monthly from August through April of each year.

Main Page:

The main page of the HAPI Online site offers five options:

• About HAPI - describes the service and includes links to other resources on the site
• Resources - lists resources available on the site, including a list of indexed journals and the HAPI Thesaurus of subject headings
• Search - takes you to the search page
• Document Delivery - gives information for how to order copies of articles through HAPI
• Subscribe - Subscription information for institutions and individuals

To Search:

To reach the search page, click the area of the graphic labeled Search, or click the Search button at the bottom of the page.

Enter search terms in the appropriate boxes of the form (Keyword, Author, Article Title, Subject, and Journal Title). Omit accents and other diacritical marks. Capitalization does not matter, and terms can be entered in any order. Separate multiple terms with a space (for example, bolivia politics, not bolivia, politics).

You may clear the form at any time by clicking the Clear Form button. (For additional help with searching, click the Help button at the bottom of the screen, or click any of the words by each box to get more help on searching with that field.)

To narrow your search:

• Use more search terms. The system will only retrieve records that contain ALL of the search terms you specify.
• You can limit your search by date or range of dates by typing in the year(s) you want to search in the appropriate boxes (default search is from/to, but you can also indicate before/after with pull-down menus by each box).
• You can limit your search to articles written in English by clicking the English box. For articles published from 1996 onward, you can also limit the search to articles in one or more other languages.
• There is an option on the search screen that will limit your search to articles on Hispanics in the United States if this is desired. This can be used in combination with other search terms in any search screen field.

To broaden your search:

• Use fewer search terms. The system will only retrieve records that contain ALL of the search terms you specify.
• Truncate search terms. For example, argentin will retrieve records containing the words argentina, argentine, argentinian, etc. To Display Results: Options for displaying the results are also indicated on the search screen.
• You may define the number of citations to be displayed per screen. NOTE: A high number of citations per screen can slow response time.
• Articles can be sorted either alphabetically or in reverse chronological order,
• You may indicate whether you wish to see the citation or the full record for each article retrieved.

To Browse Results:

Citations will display according to the display preferences you indicated on the search screen. You may browse forwards and backwards through the list by using the Previous and Next buttons at both the top and bottom of each page of citations. If you are using the full record display, you can view all of the articles written by a particular author by clicking the author's name. You can also view all articles under a specific subject heading by clicking that heading.

To Create a Bibliography:

To add any record to your bibliography, click the check box that appears to the left of the citation. A check will appear in the box. When you have finished browsing the search results and have checked all the citations you desire to add to the bibliography, click the Save Checked Items to Bibliography bar that appears at both the top and bottom of each search results screen. A new screen will appear to indicate that the record has been successfully added. From this screen you may proceed to view the bibliography, start a new search, or continue to browse the current search. If you are looking at an individual record and wish to add it to the bibliography, click the Add to bibliography button at the bottom of the screen. Click twice on the Back button of your browser to return to the list of citations. You may add records from multiple searches to the same bibliography, but the articles will be arranged alphabetically by author and not by subject.

To Print the Bibliography:

Click the View bibliography button that appears at the bottom of the search results screen, the full citation screen, or the Record Added Successfully screen. When the Your Bibliography screen appears, click the browser's Print button.

E-Mail and Downloading:

Bibliographies can be e-mailed to any valid e-mail address. To do this, click the View bibliography button as described above. On the Your Bibliography display screen, type your full e-mail address (for example, username@mydomain.com, not just username) in the Deliver to: window that appears before the list of citations, then click the E-Mail Result button. A new screen will appear to indicate the number of records (citations) that were sent via e-mail. Downloading or saving the bibliography directly to disk is not possible at this time.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There have been occasional problems printing out very large bibliographies. This is a rare occurrence, but to avoid losing any of your valuable data, it is advisable to create and print your bibliographies in sections when browsing a very large batch of search results.

To Clear the Bibliography:

Click the Clear bibliography button at the bottom of the Your Bibliography screen. If you wish for articles from different searches to be printed separately, it is best to print and clear the bibliography from one search before proceeding with a new search.

JMS 042899