Tips for Spanish 111a/211a Research Assignment
Fall 2004

For Spanish 111a/211a you are required to produce a "ficha de estudio" for the work you have selected to read. You need to find several bits of information and you will need to consult different kinds of sources to complete parts of the assignment.

STEP ONE: SELECTING A TOPIC

Reference books
You might want to start with a reference book on your topic. These can provide you with factoids about the author and the historical context in which the work was written. Some possible reference sources are:

• A Reference Guide to Latin American History
  Main Reference F1410 .R395 2000
• Wars of the Americas: a chronology of armed conflict in the New World, 1492 to present
  Main Reference E18.75 .M374 1998
• Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (5 volumes)
  Main Reference F1406 .E53 1996
• The Indians of Central and South America: an ethnohistorical dictionary
  Main Reference F1434 .O45 1991
• The Cambridge History of Latin American literature
  Main Reference PQ7081 .A1 C35 1996
• Latin American Writers (3 volumes plus a supplement)
  Main Reference PQ7081 .A1 L37 1989

STEP TWO: FINDING SOURCES

Finding Books
Use Pegasus to identify books held by UCSB Libraries. Do a KEYWORD search to find books about the book you have chosen to read. Or you can search colonial latin america literature to get some ideas. Kimberle López's Latin American novels of the Conquest: reinventing the New World might have some interesting chapters for you. You can also try searching Melvyl, the shared catalog of all the UC campuses. You can request items you find through Melvyl and it will take about a week for you to get them.

Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI)

• Coverage is 1970-present
• Contains references to articles and book reviews; no full-text, no abstracts
  • Links to full-text in JSTOR, Project Muse and SCIELO when available
• To find literary criticism about a certain author, search that author's name as a SUBJECT
• To find articles ABOUT colonial history or literature in general, type colonial literature or colonial history as a keyword search.
  • You can add a country to narrow down this general search (ie peruvian colonial literature or Mexico colonial history
  • Then search the journal title (shows up in italics in HAPI) as a TITLE in Pegasus to determine if UCSB has the item

MLA International Bibliography

• Bibliography of the Modern Language Association
• Use MLA to find articles of literary criticism or history (see the screen shot below for an example of MLA results)
  • MLA contains references to articles published in journals
    • #15 below is an example of a journal article; to see if UCSB owns this, search Lucero as a TITLE in Pegasus
  • MLA also contains references to book chapters
    • #14 below is an example of a book chapter; to see if UCSB owns this book, search Andean Oral Traditions as a TITLE in Pegasus
  • NOTE: UC-elinks does not work well with MLA; you must search Pegasus on your own

Clase/Periodica

• Database from UNAM (Mexico)
• Use this to identify literary criticism or history articles
• Must use Spanish-language search terms
• Search journal title (found in SOURCE field) in Pegasus to determine local holdings
• Use Interlibrary Loan (select "Article Request Form") to get articles in journals UCSB doesn't have

You can also talk with a librarian about your searches as you begin working on your class project. The librarian for Spanish & Portuguese (Anne Barnhart) holds office hours in the small room next to the Spanish/Portuguese departmental library (4th floor of Phelps) 11:30am - 1:00pm Wednesdays. There is a reference librarian at the reference desk in Davidson Library Monday - Thursday 9am-9pm, Saturday 1pm-5pm, and Sunday 1pm-9pm. You are welcome to ask any librarian for help.