Having trouble accessing government information? See the Libraries’ guide to Alternative Sources for Federal Information and Data.
LTAM 101: Introduction to Latin American Studies: Finding Books and Articles
Articles + Catalog
Catalog Search TIps
Subject searching for books in the Library's catalog is often best done by beginning with a Keyword Search . Start with a Keyword Search and identify one or more relevant books. Then look at the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) given in the Full Records of those titles. You can follow the subject heading links in the catalog to find similar books, or you can use the terms in the subject headings to revise your search strategies.
Keyword search: Bolivia society
Subject search: "Bolivia -- Social conditions"
Subject Search: "Bolivia -- Social life and customs"
Keyword search: Bolivia race
Subject search; "Multiculturalism -- Political aspects -- Bolivia -- 21st century"
Subject search: "Bolivia -- Ethnic relations -- Political aspects -- 21st century"
Finding Scholarly Articles
First, you will want to know about different types of periodical articles.
The databases listed below are good starting points to find scholarly articles for your research.
- Academic Search PremierFind information on academic areas of business, social sciences, humanities, general academic, general science, education and multi-cultural topics; resource provides access to major popular and scholarly journals with many full-text articles.
- GenderWatchFull-text collection of international journals, magazines, newsletters, regional publications, special reports and conference proceedings devoted to women's and gender issues.
- Global HealthA public health database that provides information on international health, biomedical life sciences, non-communicable diseases, public health nutrition, food safety and hygiene. More than 2.6 million records from 1973 to the present day sourced from over 7,000 serials, books, book chapters, conference proceedings, patents, theses, electronic publications and other hard-to-find resources. Publications from over 100 countries in 52 languages. Over 185,000 records added each year.
- Handbook of Latin American StudiesBibliography of the humanities and social sciences produced by Latin Americanist scholars and edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress. Tthe multidisciplinary Handbook alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities.
- HAPI, Hispanic American Periodicals IndexCurrently indexes over 380 journals and includes the contents of over 675 journals dating back to our start in the 1970s. Approximately 80% of currently indexed titles include links to full text sources - and many of those are freely available through open access policies.
- Historical AbstractsCovers the history of the world from 1450 to the present (excluding the United States and Canada) and indexes nearly 2,300 journals in over 40 languages.
Note: Limited to 6 users at a time. - JSTORProvides an image archive of important scholarly journal literature in nearly all the humanities and social sciences disciplines, international and foreign areas studies, and many of the sciences. UNC patrons have access to extensive retrospective holdings of hundreds of journals, starting with the first issues. Excludes the most recent 2-5 years of currently available journals.
- Latin America & Iberia DatabaseThis database provides ongoing full-text academic journals that are locally published by scholarly publishing organizations and educational institutions in many Latin American countries, Spain, and Portugal.
- MLA International BibliographyA major index for literary criticism, linguistics, folklore & cultural studies. Includes articles from several thousand journals and series published worldwide. Also covers relevant monographs, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies. Also searchable under "Criticism" within Literature Online.
- PAIS IndexA bibliographic index to the literature of public policy, social policy, and the social sciences in general. Includes full-text articles.
- Project MuseProvides access to important university press and other scholarly publisher e-journals mainly in the humanities and social science content for the scholarly community.
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses GlobalIndexes US dissertations from 1861 with full text available from 1997; masters theses covered selectively including some full text. Citations for dissertations from 1980 include 350-word abstracts, while masters' theses from 1988 have 150-word abstracts. Selectively covers dissertations from Great Britain and other European universities for recent years.
In addition to this database, the full text of the majority of UNC theses and dissertations from 2006, and all beginning in 2008, are freely available electronically from the UNC Library: Dissertations | Theses - Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal (Redalyc)This site is a portal providing free access to full-text articles published in 1138 different Latin American, Iberian and Caribbean journals covering a variety of topics in the areas of science and technology, social sciences, and humanities.
- SciELO: Scientific Electronic Library OnlineA model for cooperative electronic publishing of scientific journals on the Internet. It contains scores of journals in all subjects published in Latin America and Spain. This archive includes complete electronic editions of print titles from the 1990s onward. You can search by author, title word, subject, institutional affiliations, or year; you also can limit searching by country of origin, subject category, or journal title.
- Women's Studies InternationalInterdisciplinary, international database covering the core literature of the field of women's and gender studies with links to full text.
- Ethnic NewsWatchA full-text collection of newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press. This collection of articles, editorials, columns, reviews, etc. provides a broad diversity of perspectives and viewpoints.
Expand Your Search
On the left sidebar of the online catalog, you will find the option to search for resources within the UNC, Duke, and NC State libraries.
Interlibrary Loan
Can't find the article, book, or report you need at our library? You can request it from another library through interlibrary loan.
Books Beyond Carolina
Triangle Research Libraries Network
A searchable catalog of the holdings of Duke, UNC-CH, NCCU, NCSU libraries.
A searchable electronic union catalog listing more than 40 million records owned by libraries around the world.
Locates needed materials in other libraries, borrows books and microform and obtains photocopied material on behalf of eligible UNC users.
Digital Collections
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic & research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
The Internet Archive and Open Library offers over 8,000,000 fully accessible public domain eBooks.