Econ 148 fall 2007

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Economics 148 Latin American Economies fall 2007

Getting Started
Find Background Information
Find Recommended Databases
Find Book & Journal Titles
Find Statistics
Citation Guides
Additional Tips & Resources
Contact the Economics Librarian

Getting Started

Off Campus Access - To access the library research databases referenced on this guide from off campus, you will need to login to OCA. Click here for information regarding the service.

Make use of the library's How To Guides - particularly useful for this assignment are:

Organize your research results

Keep track of your successful keyword searches and subject headings and make note of the names of authors/scholars that come up related to your topic. The latter strategy will help decrease the number of duplicative searches you run.

The library has a sample research organization sheet available on-line.

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Background Information

Use the resources listed below to get an overview of your topic. Encyclopedias, bibliographies, and scholarly web pages are a good starting point for any research project. See How to Evaluate Information on the Web for help with assessing web pages.
Write down key dates, facts, statistics provided, look for a bibliography and make use of it.
Look up (in Cruzcat) the titles of journals and books referenced in the encyclopedias, bibliographies or web pages and see if we own them at UCSC.

The list below represents a sample of options, use Cruzcat to find more.

Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics	McHenry Reference F1410. E56 2002
Encyclopedia of Contemporary & Latin American Cultures	McHenry Reference F1406 E515 2000 v.1-3
Gale Virtual Reference	on-line database
Europa World Plus	on-line database
EIU - Economist Intelligence Unit	on-line database

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Selected Web Sites

LANIC, Latin American Network Information Center - University of Texas Austin
LADB, Latin America Database - University of New Mexico, search the archives OR the Econ search and select publications (Nueva Sociedad, etc.)
World Bank, Latin America & Caribbean - note: there is quite a large section devoted to Bolsa Familia
EcoAmericas - covers development and environmental issues in Latin America.
CIDAC - Center of Research for Development. Note: focus is on Mexico.
ECLAC, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean - regional commission of the United Nations, based in Chile, focuses on economic development in Latin America (Spanish acronymn is CEPAL).
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Americas Center - NAFTA researchers, pay special attention to the Foreign Trade Information System
Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) - click on topics for information and data about projects the IADB is working on. For example, clicking on Agriculture leads to information about the IADB's work with the Coffee Network and ultimately to a nice bibliography of articles that discuss the issues surrounding coffee production.

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Recommended Databases

If you live off campus, you will be prompted to login to the OCA service. Described above.

HAPI - A searchable index of citations to articles and documents covering Central and South America, Latin America, Mexico, the Caribbean, U.S.-Mexico border region, and Hispanics in the United States.
Subject area(s): ['Humanities', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1970 - present

CSA Illumina - Choose from any of the 30+ databases provided by CSA (formerly Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.) Cross-database searching is allowed.

Type CSA/Illumina in the search box.

Select Advanced Search.

Select Social Sciences from the subject drop down box located directly under the green search button.

Select or deselect individual databases from the link labeled "specific databases" next to the drop down box.
Select the PAIS databases specifically for NGO reports

Econlit - EconLit is a searchable database of citations with selected abstracts of literature in economics. Includes coverage of major journals as well as articles in collective volumes (essays, proceedings, etc.), books, book reviews, dissertations, and working papers.
Subject area(s): Social Sciences. Covers: 1969-present.

Business Source Premier - Searchable database of articles from scholarly business journals and other sources. Subjects include management, economics, finance, accounting, and international business.

Expanded Academic - Infotrac - EA ASAP from Infotrac, formerly known as the Magazine and Journal Articles database or MAGS, contains citations for articles in popular magazines and scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and general sciences. Legal, business, and health journals are also included. Many records have abstracts and full text.
Subject area(s): ['Art and Art History', 'General Subjects', 'Humanities', 'Science and Engineering', 'Social Sciences']. Covers: 1980-present.

Europa - Europa World Plus is the online version of the Europa World Year Book and the nine-volume Regional Surveys of the World series. First published in 1926, the year book is renowned as one of the world's leading reference works, covering political and economic information in more than 250 countries and territories.
Subject area(s): General Subjects.

EIU Economist Intelligence Unit- Click on Enterprise Client Access to view country profiles.
The searchable database of country profiles provide analysis and forecasts of the political, economic, social, and business environment in a total of 126 reports about more than 180 countries.
Subject area(s): Social Sciences. Covers: 1996 - present.

Select the Newspaper link from the library research page for a list of on-line newspaper options, historical and current. See also Latin American News Services on the Internet

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Cruzcat

Start with a keyword search in Cruzcat.
Use the keywords you gathered through searching in the encyclopedias and web pages in Cruzcat.
Make note of the subjects Cruzcat uses to describe your topic; link from the subject headings to find more potentially relevant titles.
Use the modify or limit/sort button to focus your search.
Send successful searches to your email account - put the keywords or subject terms you used in the message line to remind yourself of how you found the item(s).

Some sample subject headings:

Monetary Policy - Latin America
Coffee Industry - Latin America
Coffee Industry - Latin America - History
Income Distribution - Latin America
Latin America - Economic Conditions
Land Reform - Latin America
Rural Development - Latin America

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Statistics

LANIC Statistics Page - Latin American Network Information Center, affiliated with University of Texas, Austin.
Europa - select Country Statistics and then the specific set of statistics you want to see, for example Trade, Agriculture, etc.
EIU - Click on Enterprise Client Access to view country profiles.
World Bank, Latin America and Caribbean - click on statistics link on left side of screen.
Latin American Statistical Sources - Cornell University Website, note: not updated since 1999 and some links are not active, still worth a look, also linked from the LANIC page.
U.S. Census Bureau Foreign Trade Statistics - take special note of the Country/Product Trade Data link
WDI - World Development Indicators - World development indicators (WDI) is the World Bank's annual compilation of data about development; provides direct access to more than 550 development indicators, with time series for 208 countries and 18 country groups from 1960 to 2001.
IMF - International Monetary Fund, external data.
Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) - clicking on individual countries or topics will provide data and statistics.

For additional help with statistics, try the library's How to find Statistics web page.

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Citation Guides

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Additional Tips & Resources

Additional Library Guides

Citation Software & Web based Document/Spreadsheet Applications to Know About

Endnote - for fee, available for purchase at the book store.
Zotero - free, Firefox browser add on.
Google docs - free collaborative word processing and spreadsheet program.
Zoho Writer & Sheet - free collaborative word processing and spreadsheet program.

Contact Kerry Scott (scottk@ucsc.edu). Updated 12 October 2007.

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