Finding Books & Articles
Basic Search Tips
- Place quotation marks around keyword phrases
"trench warfare"
"Haitian Revolution"
- Capitalize Boolean logic connectors (AND, OR).
Bay of Pigs Invasion OR Invasion of Cuba
"American Involvement" AND World War I
- Click either "View all formats and languages" or "View all editions" to view all library holdings for a particular title.
- Items at UD appear first in the list of search results. Other items can be requested via interlibrary loan.
- Use the limiters on the left-hand side of your results page to change the language of the material.
Advanced Search Tips
- Type au:, su: or ti: before your keywords to specify author, subject or title words.
su:Haitian Revolution
- A title search may identify items that have matching words in their chapter titles or contents lists.
- See Searching WorldCat: Index Quick Reference for other options.
- Academic OneFile This link opens in a new window
A premier source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from scholarly journals and other authoritative sources. Also includes thousands of podcasts and transcripts from NPR and CNN, as well as videos from BBC Worldwide Learning. (Coverage: 1980 --)
- Clase and Periodica This link opens in a new window
Compiles two databases: CLASE (Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades) indexes documents in Latin American journals that specialize in the social sciences and humanities. PERIODICA (Indice de Revistas Latinoamericanas en Ciencia) covers journals specializing in science and technology. (Coverage: CLASE, 1975-- | PERIODICA, 1978 --)
- Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Index of literature covering world history (excluding the U.S. and Canada) from the 15th century to the present. Subjects include world history, military history, womens history, history of education and more. Indexes 2,300+ academic journals in over 40 languages. (Coverage: 1952 --)
- Handbook of Latin American Studies This link opens in a new window
A selective, multidisciplinary bibliography of scholarly works on Latin America. Contains bibliographic records found in the print Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS). Includes annotated citations for books, book chapters, articles, conference papers, maps and atlases, and e-resources. Alternates annually between the social sciences and the humanities. (Coverage: 1960s --)
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window
Provides access to many millions of journal articles, books, images, and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
Artstor images incorporated into JSTOR as of 8/1/2024.
- PAIS Index This link opens in a new windowAn index to the world’s public and social policy literature in the fields of business, economics, local and federal government, political science, international relations, finance, and other social sciences. Includes public policy literature in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish—periodicals, books, and government documents.
- Project MUSE Journals This link opens in a new window
Full-text, scholarly, electronic journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences from many of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies. (Coverage: 1993 or later to the present)
- Archives of Latin America and Caribbean History 16th-20th Century This link opens in a new windowWorld Scholar: Latin American & the Caribbean is a multidisciplinary database designed to meet the needs of researchers, postgraduates, and undergraduates with interests in regional studies, history, political science, anthropology, sociology, economics, and international relations. It includes a comprehensive range of content for the region, providing research across the humanities both for current issues and events in Latin America and the Caribbean as well as for historical perspective back to the colonial period. **This database has both primary and secondary sources.**
Search Tips:
Finding articles within databases and journals is not the same process you would use to conduct a search in Google or an internet search engine. You cannot type in a question, but rather need to choose specific keywords and phrases to find results. These tips are similar to how you would search for material in DELCAT Discovery.
Helpful Ways to Search:
- Use quotations around a phrase to "tell" the database or journal that you want these words to remain together.
- Ex: "Bay of Pigs Invasion"
- Think of synonyms to your keywords...Especially when conducting historical research, you may need to develop words and phrases that were used during that particular time period, rather than modern-day words.
- Ex: World War I; First World War; The Great War - All would give you different results!
- Use AND/OR to connect words, concepts, and phrases together to receive specified results.
- Ex: Bay of Pigs AND Kennedy
- Use the Language Limiter feature to find Spanish-language material or to eliminate Spanish-language material.
Use the Advanced Search option in databases and journals to narrow down by date, region, type of document, and more!
Browsing the stacks in Morris Library can be extremely helpful when you are looking for additional sources for your research. Most books related to Latin America and Brazil history can be found on the 3rd floor of Morris Library and fall under the following Library of Congress classifications:
D History - General
F1201 - 3799 Latin America. Spanish America
F2501-2659 Brazil
You can also "browse" the shelves virtually by searching by Call Number through DELCAT.