History: Latin America: Reference

Materials which are referred to for brief or general information. Examples include:

• Background or overview synopses (encyclopedia)
• Definitions (dictionary)
• Synonyms (thesaurus)
• Statistics
• Biographical Details
• Maps (atlas)

Reference resources are organized in an order that aids searching (alphabetically, chronologically, etc).  Most include an index which points users to the appropriate section.  Tips for searching:

1. Decide on your search terms
2. Try searching with them
3. If not satisfied with the results, try searching a synonym or related idea

Things to watch out for:

• Is the computer searching only the title/header of the entries or the full-text of the information?  You will get more results, but more of them will be irrelabent if you are searching the full-text.
• Are you searching for a proper noun (name, place,...)?  Make sure that the spelling is correct and try variations if it originated in a foreign language.
• Searching for something by date?  This is trickier than it sounds.  If possible, search for an event name or topic rather than a date, e.g. civil rights movement or hippies or flower children rather than 1960s.

• Historical dictionary of U.S.-Latin American relations. Ref F 1418 .F457 2005
• Encyclopedia of Latin American history and culture. 5 vol. Ref F 1406 .E53 1996
• Latin American heroes : liberators and patriots from 1500 to the present. Ref F 1407 .A32 1993
• Encyclopedia of Mexico: history, society, and culture. Ref F1210.E63 1997
• The Oxford Encyclopedia of mesoamerican cultures. Ref F 1218.6.O95 2001
• Cambridge encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean. Ref F 1406.C36 1985.
• Historical dictionary of Cuba. Ref F 1754.S83 2001
• Historical dictionaries of various other Central and South American nations: at Ref F 1443 to Ref F 3708.
• Puerto Rico past and present: an encyclopedia. Ref F 1954.F47 1998
• Dictionary of Afro-Latin American civilization. Ref F 1408.3.N86

• International historical statistics : the Americas 1750-1988. Ref HA 175 .M52 1993
• Cuba: a handbook of historical statistics.  Ref F 1778.S37 1982.

• Historical atlas of Latin America: political, geographic, economic, cultural.   F 1408 .W66 1967

• Cultural studies in the curriculum : teaching Latin America.  F 1409.95.U6 C85 2003