The Trexler Library: Muhlenberg College

Latin American Environmental History

Need help with your research? Contact:

Kelly Cannon
Humanities & Business Subject Specialist
Trexler Library
phone: x3602
email: kcannon@muhlenberg.edu
IM (AIM, Yahoo, MSN): refcannon
Reference desk IM: talktotrexler

Reference works

Encyclopedia of Mexico (Trexler Library Reference Collection 972.003 E56o)
Signed articles useful especially for the bibliographies.

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture
(http://0-infotrac.galegroup.com.library.muhlenberg.edu/itweb/mul_coll?db=GVRL)
Signed articles written by leading scholars in the field. Great for topic narrowing and for identifying the most important articles and books on a subject.

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page)
Unsigned articles. Seek corroboration. Use bibliography that points to additional resources.

Authoritative secondary commentary in books. . .

Trexler Library Catalog
NOTE: Access from the Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) > Catalog.
Catalog of all books and documents in Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College.

WorldCat ***RECOMMENDED***
NOTE: Access from the Trexler Library website > Library Catalogs
Catalog of books and documents in libraries throughout the world. Watch especially for the AREA LIBRARIES designation.

Authoritative secondary commentary in articles . . .

Academic Search Premier ***RECOMMENDED***
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) > Databases A to Z
Standard index for peer-reviewed articles and scholarly books across the disciplines (sports, etc.).

Historical Abstracts
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) > Databases A to Z
Standard index for peer-reviewed articles and scholarly books on Latin American history.

LexisNexis Academic
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z. Good for environmental law journals. Go to legal section of database.

PRISMA ***RECOMMENDED***
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) > Databases A to Z
Indexing and full text for peer-reviewed journals published in and about Latin America, many in Spanish and Portuguese on an array of topics including sports, etc.

databases emphasizing the environment and health...

Biological and Agricultural Index
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z. A standard index for peer-reviewed articles related to environment and health.

Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) ***RECOMMENDED***
Full text can be hard to get off campus. Track full text by searching on the journal title in the library's online catalog.

HealthSource
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z. Scholarly articles on health and medicine.

PubMed
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z. The standard index for article on medicine and the history of medicine.

Sage Online
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z. Full-text scholarly articles with a social science orientation. Good for sustainability topics.

ScienceDirect
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z. A premier database for full-text science articles, many related to the environment and sustainability.

getting to the full text of an article. . .

Once you have found the citation of a journal article you're interested in, click on the Get It link found next to the citation, or run a journal title search in Trexler Library's online catalog. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Catalog.

articles via interlibrary loan. . .

Journal articles not found in Trexler Library can be ordered on interlibrary loan.
ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Interlibrary Loan

What if I need news articles to serve as primary documentation of my thesis?

LexisNexis Academic
ACCESS: Trexler Library website (http://www.muhlenberg.edu/library) >  Databases A to Z.A wealth of news sources from across Latin America, but also all major U.S. papers including the New York Times.

Can I search all the library databases and catalog together, in one search?

Most of the databases and the library catalog can be searched together in a new library search engine called Search Central found on the Trexler Library website. Most useful when working with narrow topics where you need everything that's available.  Several search features are missing from the original databases, like relevance, and language and peer review limiters.

Websites more likely to be authoritative or scholarly...

Intute (http://www.intute.ac.uk/)
From a consortium of universities in the UK, reviews websites for purposes of higher education and research.

LANIC Environmental and Natural Resources
Gateway to agency sites and some scholarly sites focusing on the environment in Latin America. This gateway is maintained by staff at the University of Texas at Austin.

New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/)

Citing sources in Chicago or other standard citation styles

For tips on citing print and electronic sources, visit Trexler Library's Citation Guides for Print and Electronic Resources. ACCESS: Trexler Library website > Citation Guides.

For automated citation, try the shareware Zotero (http://www.zotero.org/).

© Muhlenberg College
Last modified: 12 February 2010