Latin American Studies  Tags: latin_america caribbean latino hispanic mesoamerica andes history  

Reference Universe is a unique database that makes transparent both printed and online reference material that might otherwise remain hidden. It searches back-of-the-book indexes and article titles in thousands of encyclopedias and other reference works owned by Temple University Libraries.

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Single volume historical dictionaries published between 1972 and 2008 exist for most Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Manage your citations with RefWorks, a tool that allows researchers to easily import, export, search, and create automatically formatted bibliographies online. Citations found via searches in library databases such as JSTOR and many other databases can be imported directly into RefWorks. No manual typing required. Bibliographies generated within RefWorks can then be exported into Word using any of dozens of citation formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.).

Encyclopedias and other reference books serve as excellent places to begin your research:

1. Scholarly encyclopedias help users contextualize their topics, thus setting the foundation for the next steps in the research process;
2. Bibliographies, which can take the form of whole books or brief "Further Reading" sections after encyclopedia articles, advance research by pointing the user to relevant primary and secondary sources.

A selected list of Latin American Studies reference titles (hyperlinked titles are available online as full-text eBooks):

• Armed Forces of Latin America: Their Histories, Development, Present Strength and Military Potential. c1984 [print]
• Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean. c1985 [print]
• Cambridge History of Latin America. c1984- [print]
• Chronology of World Slavery (see chapter on Latin America) [print]
• Colonialism: An International, Social, Cultural, and Political Encyclopedia [print]
• Dictionary of Afro-Latin American Civilization. c1980 [print]
• Encyclopedia of Latin-American History. c1956 and c1968 [print]
• Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. c1996 [print]
• Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Society, & Culture. c1997 [print]
• Historical Dictionary of U.S. Latin American Relations. c2005 [print]
• Latin America: A Guide to the Historical Literature. c1971 [ACLS | print]
• Latin America and the Caribbean: A Critical Guide to Research Sources. c1992 [print]
• Latin American Studies: An Annotated Bibliography of Core Works. c2002 [print]
• The Men of Cajamarca: A Social and Biographical Study of the First Conquerors of Peru. c1972 [ACLS | print]
• Mexico: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Culture and History. c2004 [Credo Reference]
• New Dictionary of the History of Ideas. c2005 [Gale | print]

  A selection of relevant articles:

  • Anticolonialism: Latin America
  • Authoritarianism: Latin America
  • The City: Latin America
  • Colonialism: Latin America
  • Creolization: Caribbean
  • Dictatorship in Latin America
  • Indigenismo
  • Religion and the State: Latin America
  • Republicanism: Latin America
    
• Race and Ethnic Relations in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Historical Dictionary and Bibliography. c1980 [print]
• A Reference Guide to Latin American History. c2000 [print]
• The United States in Latin America: A Historical Dictionary. c1992 [print]

Britannica Online has carefully edited articles on all major topics. It fits the ideal purpose of a reference source as a place to get started -- or to refer back to as you read and write: articles written by easy-to-identify (or signed), credible authors that provide the academic community's most accepted facts and opinions about a topic. Most articles provide links or references to additional research.

You can generally cite these articles without your professor frowning on them as sources. Ask first: some faculty don't want you to cite from any encyclopedia. Why not? As a class or type of media encyclopedias are best suited to providing background information rather than in-depth or up-to-date scholarly analysis.

Wikipedia is "written collaboratively by volunteers from all around the world" and relies on the collective wisdom of its volunteers to get the facts right and to balance the opinions expressed in the articles. It can be very useful as a starting point for many topics, especially obscure ones with special or passing popular interest.

Some Temple University faculty instruct their students not to use Wikipedia as a source because of the volunteer approach to editing, which can be unreliable at times. So, to be safe, think of Wikipedia more as a place to get started, but move on from Wikipedia to works with an identifiable author from a traditionally edited encyclopedia or other published reference work. An interesting compromise between traditional encyclopedias and Wikis is Citizendium.

Substantive Source: Rick Lezenby

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