Research Guides: LALS : Latin American and Latino/a Studies: Primary Sources

What is a Primary Source?

A primary source is a record of an event, an occurrence, or a time period produced by a participant or observer at the time. Typically, primary sources include:

unique documents or manuscripts (letters, diaries, journals, writings, speeches, photographs, scrapbooks, etc.)
historic records of an organization (correspondence, memoranda, minutes, annual reports, etc.).
government documents & maps
artwork & artifacts
music & audiovisual materials (film, audio and video tape)
electronic computer files

Primary Sources

CyberCentro Directory of search engines and newspapers throughout Latin America organized by country
La Colección Puertorriqueña Digital collections from the Coleccion Digital Puertorriqueña at Coleccion Puertorriqueña of the University of Puerto Rico Library. These collections include variuos magazines, newspapers, and books.
LACLI An international collaboration to create a repository of free online resources for Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian studies
LANIC: Latin American Network Information Center Search for web resources by subject, in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

Latino-Hispanic American Experience: Series 1 (Arte Público Series 1) This link opens in a new window A digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture. “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project” – from which the collections draws its content, is the largest national project ever to locate, preserve and disseminate Hispanic culture of the United States in its written form since colonial times until 1960.
Latino-Hispanic American Experience: Series 2 (Arte Público Series 2) This link opens in a new window Manuscript, book, and newspaper content in the areas of Hispanic American civil rights, religion, and women’s rights ranging from the eighteenth through the twentieth century. The database features over 250,000 pages of manuscript content, over 100 newspaper titles, and over 400 books. The collection draws its content from the “Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project” that seeks to gather lost or rare documents and publications pertinent to Hispanic history and culture.

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Includes links to electronic journals, news sources, and magazines and the CLNet Research Center (arranged by topic).
Political Database of the Americas (Georgetown University) includes election data, executive and legislative branches, political party information (by country)

Get help with primary sources

Find Primary Sources Links to collections at Smith, in the Five Colleges, on the web, and via the library's many subscription databases.
Citation Guides & Style Manuals
Smith Libraries guide links to online versions of MLA, Chicago, and other popular manuals for writing papers and formatting footnote and bibliography citations. Includes a section on how to cite images.