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A Guide to World History

Reference Works - A Place to Begin

Encyclopedia

Oxford Research Encyclopedia: Latin American History offers long-form overview articles written, peer-reviewed, and edited by leading scholars in Latin American History. The encyclopedia covers both foundational and cutting-edge topics in order to develop, over time, an anchoring knowledge base for major areas of research. This source is regularly updated. eBook

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, 2nd ed. (2008) provides a comprehensive, multidisciplinary view of Latin American history and culture from prehistoric times to the present. Covers cultural issues and includes numerous biographical profiles of important figures in politics, letters and the arts. eBook

 

Bibliographies

Oxford Bibliographies Online: Latin American Studies- combines the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia to guide researchers to the best available scholarship in Latin American Studies. Each article includes an introduction written by a top scholar in the field. Also includes expert recommendations on the best works available in each discipline – whether it be a chapter, a book, a journal article, a website, an archive, or data set – to streamline the research process. digital

 

The Library of Congress subheading "bibliographies" is exactly what it suggests: a printed bibliography on the subject. Before the digital age, librarians and scholars created print bibliographies of all the known, important works on particular subjects. If you find the appropriate subject headings for your topic by catalog searching, scroll down the list of subheadings and look for "bibliographies" or use it in a keyword search. 

 

Famous Individuals

Biography and Genealogy Master Index (1975 - ) Indexes any print product that includes biographical information on individuals, both living and deceased, from every field of activity and from all areas of the world. The total number of biographical sketches indexed by BGMI is now more than 16.9 million. digital

 

Latin@s in the United States of (North) America

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latinos & Latinas in the United States draws together the diverse historical and contemporary experiences in the United States of Latinos and Latinas from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Central America, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Over 900 A-to-Z articles written by academics, scholars, writers, artists, and journalists, address such broad topics as identity, art, politics, religion, education, health, and history. digital

Latino America: A state-by-state encyclopedia A Hispanic and Latino presence in what is now the United States goes back to Spanish settlement in the sixteenth century in Florida and the progressive U.S. conquest of the Spanish-controlled territory of California and the Southwest by 1853 and the Gadsden Purchase. Much of this information is hard to find and has never been researched before. All 50 states and the District of Columbia are covered in individual chapters. The historical overview is the core of the chapter. A selected bibliography and photos complement the chapters. print 

Secondary Sources - Books and Academic Journals

Historical Abstracts (1955-) Historical coverage of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada), from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI) Article citations about Central and South America, Mexico, Brazil, the Caribbean basin, the United States-Mexico border region, and Hispanics/Latinos in the United States. Analyses of current political, economic, and social issues as well as unique coverage of Latin American arts and letters.

Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) Abstracts and complete bibliographic information for published materials about Latin America on topics in the social sciences and humanities. Available in English or Spanish.

JSTOR Originally containing digitized back issues of academic journals, it now encompasses books and other primary sources as well as current issues of journals in the humanities and social sciences. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals in over 50 disciplines.

Bibliografia Mesoamericana Assembled by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies Inc. (FAMSI; under the Los Angeles County Museum of Art), a comprehensive and continually updated bibliographic dataset of the published literature pertaining to the anthropology of Mesoamerica (México, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador). Content includes archaeology, ethnography, ethnohistory, art history, linguistics, physical anthropology, and other related disciplines.

Google Scholar The most extensive index of academic journal articles. Accessing Google Scholar via the proxied link will enable Get It! and Web of Science Links from within Google Scholar citations.

U.S. Newspaper Databases

Your instructor will require you to research U.S. newspapers from the 19th century to trace the emergence of statues/monuments dedicated to Christopher Columbus. WashU Libraries have purchased access to a number of databases which cover major markets (big cities) with long-lasting titles. I have included an open-access database in this list as well, Chronicling America, because it features newspapers from smaller markets (towns) and titles that may have lasted only a few years.  

Immediately below you will find links to those newspapers as well as a video tutorial on how to use them.

Early American Newspapers, 1690-1922 over 1,000 U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, including titles from all 50 states. Video tutorial

Nineteenth Century U. S. Newspapers (1800 - 1900) fully-scanned pages for hundreds of 19th century U.S. newspapers including not just articles and editorials but advertisements and illustrations as well. Video tutorial

Historical American Newspapers (ProQuest) includes The Atlanta Constitution (1868-1942), Boston Globe (1872 - 1991), Hartford Courant (1764 - 1997), Los Angeles Times (1865-1922), The New York Times (1851-1993), San Francisco Chronicle (1869-1922), St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1874-1922), The Wall Street Journal (1889 - 2011), and The Washington Post  (1877 - 2006). Video tutorial 

Chronicling America - free access to U.S. newspapers from 46 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, published between 1789 and 1963 in 18 languages. Video tutorial

Finding newspapers in the catalog - You can search the catalog by title or by subject to find a particular newspaper or all of the newspapers for a given city. Video tutorial