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If you're an experienced researcher or already familiar with the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS), you might like to learn some more advanced tricks and tips for searching HLAS. While most of this guide focuses on HLAS Web, this section introduces and describes some of the ways that HLAS Online, our legacy online tool, might be useful for your research. Note that HLAS Online relies on keyword searches; browse searching is not available.
HLAS Online provides access to information about books, articles, and other materials published from 1935 to the present. Many researchers familiar with the Handbook have probably used or heard of HLAS Online because it launched in the 1990s.HLAS Online includes Basic Search, Keyword Search, Author Search, Title Search, and Subject Search. The interface for HLAS Online is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Use Basic Search if you are unfamiliar with searching HLAS Online or you want to develop a quick sample search. The Basic Search help page provides more guidance and search examples.
Use Expert Search when you want to combine two or more fields in the same search (i.e., author and title, or title and subject, etc.) or when you want to conduct a highly specific search. The Expert Search help page provides more information and examples.
HLAS Online has a detailed Help section that provides information about searching.
The HLAS Subject Term Glossary lists the subject headings that appear in HLAS records. The HLAS Journal Abbreviations page lists full journal titles and the journal title abbreviations used in HLAS.
Linked Tables of Contents and introductory essays for each section are available for HLAS volumes 50-65. For volumes 49 and earlier, linked Tables of Contents are not currently available in this format. Instead, introductory essays for volumes 1-49 are searchable in HLAS Online by combining the phrase "general statement" with other search terms (e.g., sociology) in a keyword search.
The Linked Table of Contents page is useful if you do not have access to the print volumes of the Handbook. The Tables of Contents provide a substitute for paging through the book and reading all the annotations published in a print volume. Use the TOCs to guide you through a volume or through a particular discipline, like Art or Sociology. Each volume or section provides a snapshot of the state of scholarly research at a particular time. Reading through the introductory essays and annotations is useful for gaining a general understanding of the topics and themes under discussion in a particular field.
As you may already have noticed by consulting the Linked Table of Contents page, each HLAS subsection is assigned an alphanumeric code. The code corresponds to a discipline and geographic area or time period or genre. For example, philosophy of Mexico is hwd and geography of the Caribbean is snf2000. Consult the Tables of Contents to find the discipline (or subject) and country or time period that interests you and use the indicated code in a search. These codes will help you find publications from the 1960s to the present. (Publications from the 1930s-1960s may be searched using other methods described in this guide.)
The linked contents of the philosophy chapter from HLAS Volume 64 are below. Again, notice that the codes in this case correspond to different countries. Try following the links to see the results.
You can use the codes in combination with specific publication dates to find works of Argentine philosophy published in the 1980s, for example. Or you can use the codes alone to find all the works on Argentine philosophy annotated in HLAS.
Volume 64 / HUMANITIES
PHILOSOPHY: LATIN AMERICAN THOUGHT
[Juan Carlos Torchia Estrada and Clara Alicia Jalif de Bertranou - Introductory Essay] General ........................................................hwb México .........................................................hwd América Central ................................................hwf Caribe Insular .................................................hwh Venezuela ......................................................hwj Colombia .......................................................hwk Ecuador ........................................................hwm Perú ...........................................................hwo Bolivia ........................................................hwq Chile ..........................................................hws Brasil .........................................................hwu Uruguay ........................................................hwx Argentina ......................................................hwy
When you browse HLAS by subject, you will mainly see topical terms and geographical place names, some names and titles, and cross-references. HLAS subjects are controlled by the HLAS Subject Term Glossary. In addition, many HLAS records for books include Library of Congress Subject Headings, with terms found in LC Subject Authorities. SUBJECT Browse searches in HLAS Web - both beginning with and contains - list all headings that appear in HLAS records - whether assigned by HLAS staff or by the Library of Congress.
