COVERAGE: The electronic version of the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) covers volumes 1-53 (1936-1994) of the most respected bibliographical publication in Latin American Studies. HLAS/CD contains all the bibliographical entries and introductory essays found in the hard copy and it includes annotated citations to journal articles and monographs in the humanities and social sciences. Searches can be conducted in English or Spanish and may be limited by any combination of keyword, author, subject, date, volume number, and publisher.

TO SEARCH: Select NOVICE MODE and enter one or more words in the box marked FIRST SEARCH TERM. Next you may select any combination in the FIELD box to search (AUTHOR, TITLE, DESCRIPTION, ANNOTATION or SUBJECT). Click the EXECUTE button or ENTER to begin your search.

Please note that diacritical marks are generally ignored during searches. The letters ñ and ç must be searched using a wildcard as a placeholder for the special characters.

For example: to search the name RAFAEL NUÑEZ

enter: RAFAEL NU?EZ

TO REFINE SEARCH: You may modify your search by entering another word or words in the box mark SECOND SEARCH TERM. The Boolean operators are used in modifying these searches and can be selected from the DEFAULT OPERATOR box. Combining terms with AND finds items that contain both search terms (eg. Guatemala and religion). Combining terms with OR finds items that contain any or all of the search terms (eg. economy or recession).

You may also refine your search by selecting the year of publication or a specific volume number of the Handbook of Latin American Studies. Since the database contains both bibliographic citations and essays, you may specify which of these you would like to search in the DOCUMENT TYPE box.

To combine a previous set of searches, find and click the SEARCH HISTORY icon or use the pull-down menu labeled WINDOW. Click on the number of one of your previous searches, click on the operators you would like to use and then select another one of your previous searches. Your new search will appear in the BRS SEARCH STATEMENT box. Click EXECUTE. For example.

1 or 3 Combines your 1st and 3rd set and results in citations that contain any of the terms in these sets.

1 and 5 Combines your lst and 5th sets so that resulting citations contain both concepts.

You may also TRUNCATE terms with * key. For example, Columb* will retrieve Colomb(ia), Colomb(ian), colomb(ina), colomb(ianas), Colomb(ianisms), colomb(ianistas), colomb(iano), etc.

DISPLAY RESULTS: Click the hits LIST button to display a list of the records retrieved in your search. If there are too many records to display at one time, scroll up or down using the arrow keys.

If you wish to see a document in its full form, click DOCUMENTS. Arrow keys in the upper right portion of the screen allow you to view the next document, the previous document or the first or last document in your list of hits. To return to your list of documents, click on the LIST OF DOCUMENTS icon at the top of the screen.

If the number of hits is too great, you can further refine the search by clicking the corresponding buttons: REFINE+ will restrict the results of the original search to those containing both the original search and the refining term (using the Boolean operator AND); REFINE- will restrict the results of the original search to those containing the original search term, but not the refining term using the Boolean operator NOT).

MARK RECORDS: You can tag those documents you wish to see in their full form by clicking anywhere on the row describing each document. You can then choose to see the full form of all documents or just the tagged documents.

PRINT OR DOWNLOAD RECORDS: Click on the PRINT icon to print the contents of your active window.

You can also print by using the pull-down menu labeled FILE. Depending on which window is active, one or more of the following menu commands will be enabled: PRINT DOCUMENTS; PRINT HITS LIST; PRINT SEARCH HISTORY.

It is also possible to copy a marked text and paste it to the Windows clipboard or to another Windows application (Write, Word, WordPerfect, etc.) by using the COPY/PASTE command under the pull-down menu labeled EDIT.

To save, use the pull-down menu labeled FILE. Type in the file location and filename in the dialog box. (PLEASE SAVE TO THE A: DRIVE.) Depending on which window is active, one or more of the following menu commands will be enabled: SAVE DOCUMENTS; SAVE HITS LIST; SAVE SEARCH HISTORY; RESTORE SEARCH HISTORY.

HOW TO EXIT: Click on the icon to the far right labeled EXIT THE APPLICATION. You can also exit by using the pull-down menu labeled FILE and clicking EXIT.