Tips for Chican@ Studies 141 Research Paper
Spring 2008

This website is to help you with the research component of your Research Response Essay. Professor Roque Ramírez will provide details about what you can research. This website will help you think about approaching that research and using the different library resources.

On this page:
Finding a News Item
How to search
Finding Other Sources (Books, Articles, Web Sites)
Citing Your Work
Get Help

STEP ONE: Finding a News Item

The below sources can be found on the library's Indexes and Databases page. If you are off campus, you first need to go through the Proxy Server page and then click on "Article Indexes and Databases.

Lexis Nexis Academic

• Contains full-text newspapers and news transcripts
• Difficult to navigate
• Choose US and Major Newspapers to get New York Times
• Choose World (non-English) to get some Spanish-Language press
• Choose Transcripts to get NPR, ABC, CNN and other news transcripts
• Default date is "previous 2 years" so you might want to change that

Ethnic NewsWatch

• Contains regional and ethnic newspapers
• Has a lot of full-text material
• Go to Advanced Search
• Search ABSTRACTS (change drop-down menu at the end of the line)
• Use * to truncate
• Use Boolean and search bilingually

Los Angeles Times

• Full-text of LA Times

STEP TWO: Finding Other Sources

Creating Search Strategies
Remember what we did in class? When you research a topic, you need to think about how someone else would express the same idea that you have. So, if you are researching immigration, you also have to think that someone will write about "immigrants." So, you can use "immigra*" to truncate you topic and get alternate endings (except in HAPI). But depending on the perspective, those same people are emigrants. So, you might want to search: immigra* or emigra* to be more complete. You also might want to include other languages if you want bilingual results.

A search in an article database for articles about how Guatemalan immigrants are portrayed in the media might look like this:
immigra* or emigra* or imigra*
and
guatemal* or central america* or centroamerica*
and
stereotyp* or depic* or image* or estereotip* or portray*

BOOKS
Pegasus is the UCSB catalog and will tell you what books, music CDs and videos we have here. Use the Advanced Search to limit to format type if you want just videos and to get multiple search lines.

Melvyl is similar to Pegasus but for the whole UC system. When you use Melvyl, keep in mind that it will take about a week to get the items from another campus.

ARTICLES
For these, you go back to the databases list. Unlike the above news sources, these are not full-text online so you will have to use UC eLinks to see if UCSB has the item in print or online.

America: History & Life

• Use Keyword search box
• Can use Boolean searching including parenthesis
• Use * to truncate
• Limit by language (you can type English OR Spanish)
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI)

• Contains references to articles published in and about Latin America
• Click "Search" on left-hand side to get to screen with more than one search option
• Use keyword search option
• You can limit by language (you can check more than one box)
• You can limit to US Hispanics only
• HAPI automatically truncates (if you use a * it will get confused)
  • Type immigra (with no *) to get immigrant, immigrants, immigration, etc.
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Chicano Database

• Contains references to articles about US Latina/os too
• Do keyword searches in the Advanced Search screen
• Use * to truncate
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Sociological Abstracts

• Can use Boolean searching including parenthesis
• Do keyword searches (change drop-down menu to KEYWORD for each line)
• Use * to truncate
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

Academic Search Complete

• Go to Advanced Search
• Do Keyword searches
• Can use Boolean searching including parenthesis
• Use * to truncate
• Limit by language (you can type English OR Spanish)
• Use UC eLinks to see if we have the item

PRIMARY vs SECONDARY SOURCES
Princeton University Library has a good website explaining the differences between primary and secondary resources. It also gives examples of terms to use when searching the library catalog or other databases.

Using Web Sites
Professor Roque Ramírez has already warned you about watching out for what you find on the open (free) web. I suggest that you go through the following 2 gateway sites instead of just going to Google:

• LANIC: the primer gateway site for Latin American Studies. You can navigate by topic or by country.
  
• Andanzas al Web Latino: a thorough gateway site on border issues

STEP THREE: Writing and Citing your work

You are allowed to use any citation style you wish (MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian...) but you have to use it correctly. The Reference Desk has citation style manuals that you can consult. You can also use these online guides:

• APA Guide (Scroll down to the bottom)
• Chicago Guide
• MLA Guide (scroll down to the bottom)
• Turabian Guide

You can also try this, but make sure you double-check its accuracy. You don't want to depend on it for your grade!

STEP FOUR: Get Help!