Collins Memorial Library: SPAN 205: Spanish Contemporary Issues: Articles

What's a secondary source?

In secondary sources, authors analyze and interpret primary source materials.

Secondary sources can be scholarly or popular. Scholarly sources (sometimes called "academic" or "peer-reviewed" sources) are written by and for experts and typically include bibliographies and citations. Popular sources are written for a general, non-expert audience and can be authored by anyone.

Recommended Subject Databases

Depending on your topic, you may wish to search additional subject databases.

America: History & Life This link opens in a new window
Indexes articles, books, essays in books, and dissertations on the history and culture of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present.
Fuente Academica
Spanish-language scholarly articles from Latin America, Portugal, and Spain. The database provides full text coverage for more than 500 scholarly Spanish language journals.
Gender Studies Database
Covers the full spectrum of gender-engaged scholarship inside and outside academia.
Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
Indexes articles, books, book chapters, and dissertations on all aspects of world history from 1450 to the present.

Latin America & Iberian Database
Full-text access to academic journals that are published in many Latin American countries, Spain, and Portugal. Major subject areas of study are represented, including business, science, technology, social sciences, education, and humanities.

Political Science Complete
Provides full text, and indexing and abstracts, for many journal titles with a worldwide focus reflecting the globalization of contemporary political discourse.
PRISMA Database (Publicaciones y Revistas Sociales y Humanísticas)
A comprehensive reference resource providing scholarly journals in the social sciences and humanities for the interdisciplinary academic study of Hispanic and Latin America and the Caribbean Basin.
Sociological Abstracts
Abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences.

News Resources

To find media coverage of contemporary issues, try the following:

Latin American Newsletters (LatinNews)
Provides expert political, economic, and security analysis on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Access limited to 1 simultaneous user.
Access World News
Find global information on topics related to business and economics, the environment, global issues, health, international studies, literature, performing and fine arts, politics and government, science, social issues, technology and more from a variety of news media featuring newspapers, videos and web-only content.
International Newsstream
Provides the most recent news content outside of the US and Canada. Select "Spanish" under language.
Nexis Uni (formerly LexisNexis Academic)
Access to news, business, governmental and legal sources.
Los Angeles Times
One of the largest metropolitan newspapers in the U.S. The Times' is the largest news gathering operation in California. Each issue of every newspaper is indexed thoroughly, giving access to top news stories, and detailed information on the arts, sports, business, and popular culture. Even such items as editorials, editorial cartoons, obituaries, and letters to the editor from well-known people are indexed.
New York Times (ProQuest)
Includes The New York Times; Late Edition (East Coast), New York Times Magazine, and New York Times Book Review.

Multidisciplinary Databases

The databases listed below are examples of multidisciplinary finding aids.

Note: If you need discipline-specific resources, it is better to use the recommended subject databases under the "articles" tab in the library subject guides.

Academic Search Premier
A multidisciplinary database containing full text journal, magazine & newspaper articles, many from peer-reviewed titles. This scholarly collection covers information in nearly every area of academic study.
JSTOR
An interdisciplinary journal archive. It includes archives of over one thousand leading academic journals across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, as well as select monographs and other materials valuable for academic work.
Project MUSE
Interdisciplinary database includes books and articles from scholarly publishers with focus on humanities and social science.
ProQuest Central
Covering more than 160 subject areas, ProQuest Central is a large aggregated database of periodical content. It features a diversified mix of content including scholarly journals, trade publications, magazines, books, newspapers, reports and videos.

How to Search for Spanish Language Material in Databases

Depending on the database, there are a few strategies to find resources written in Spanish:

You can:

conduct your search in English and then, once you have a list of results, click on the Search Options and then from the Language list, select Spanish.
search using Spanish search terms.
locate the Thesaurus or Subject Terms and appropriate Spanish terms.

Be aware of databases that auto correct Spanish words to similar English words.

General Database Search Tips

Try these strategies to become a better, more efficient searcher -- and help you find articles that you can actually use:

Build your search vocabulary -- keep a running list of key words, phrases, concepts, synonyms, and any related terms or ideas that you find.
Use advanced search features -- narrow your search with "AND," expand your search with "OR," or search in specified fields (i.e., author, title, publication, abstract).
Use search limits -- control the types of results you get (academic journals? language?) and how they are displayed (date? relevance?) so that you're only looking at results you can use.
Try multiple searches and evaluate your results -- try to figure out why you got the results you did, and adjust your search until you get closer to results you can use.
Use database descriptors -- once you find an article that looks good, see what descriptors or "subject headings" were assigned to it in the database. You can use these to search only for articles that have the same descriptors attached.

Tipasa: Interlibrary Loan

If your article is not available at Collins Library, you've got another option for getting it. Use Tipasa, our interlibrary loan service.

Tipasa is linked to your library account so you'll need to log in to use it.

Once you are logged in, either go directly to Tipasa and manually enter the information, or, if you're using a database, look for a shortcut link to automatically fill out the form:

Allow at least a week for the article to come. If your article is delivered in electronic format, you'll receive an email with a link to follow as soon as it's arrived.