Compiled and reviewed by Rhonda L. Neugebauer
University of California, Riverside
Bibliographer, Latin American Studies
Collection Development Division

E-Resources for Latin American Studies
Major Websites and Guides

By Rhonda L. Neugebauer

In this column I will describe and evaluate significant electronic resources in Latin American Studies. These new information sources, especially the Internet resources developed in the last few years, have profoundly broadened our thinking about research and networking, have greatly influenced our professional activities in many areas, and have added new dimensions to our duties as LA specialists. Increasingly, we are obliged to provide connections to and evaluations of the vast resources that proliferate on the Internet. We are also challenged to creatively manage and share these resources in order to facilitate the delivery of scholarly information. The ubiquitous and interconnected nature of e-resources has created new opportunities for professional and institutional collaboration and cooperation, and, at the same time, has highlighted an increased need for technical competencies, customized delivery systems, and sharing of expertise. As the scholarly community increases its usage of electronic resources and communications, and as additional constituencies (business, governmental, non-profit) join in the development of new information products, services and networking, our professional contribution becomes more important and more complicated. By contributing to the design, publishing and evaluation of these resources, we share our collective knowledge with others and thus increase our potential to facilitate academic research in the field of Latin American studies.

The sites chosen for review here, with their pages of links and sections of resources, provide complex but easily navigated maps for exploration of the rapidly changing and expanding territory of Latin American Internet country. As noted in the annotations of these sites, many SALALM members and institutions have already developed innovative products, web services, and electronic tools that have enhanced Internet understanding and usage. Their work has provided insight, guidance and value to this information and has supported as well as influenced research and communication in critical new ways.

1. Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC), (http://lanic.utexas.edu). This WWW site, managed by the Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, is the most comprehensive server and gateway of Internet resources focused on Latin America. Since its establishment as a gopher directory in 1992, it has become a renowned website and directory for Latin American Studies resources, with over 3,500 links to websites, newsgroups, and listservs. This site has earned recognition from the Internet, publishing, and scholarly communities. It is an exciting and rapidly growing hub of electronic offerings for Latin American Studies and an important leader in networking, reporting and archiving of considerable electronic resources. With directories covering all countries and most academic disciplines, the strength of this site is in its provision of access to Latin American sites and networks, academic databases (with several unique searchable indexes), research institutions, libraries, commercial sites and gopher resources. The site also hosts several joint projects and databases, some with growing national "bibliographic" significance, such as ARL's Latin Americanist Research Resources Pilot Project, the LASNET archives, the LASA Papers archive, and Molly Molloy's guide, Internet Resources for Latin America (reviewed below). LANIC's main page is organized into geographic and subject directories, and provides access to 33 countries and 38 subjects. Also listed are ten other topics/guides with pages of links and services including inter-disciplinary subject-based resources, international services, virtual libraries, conference announcements, business and personal pages, and WWW/internet tools.

2. Hispanic Reading Rm., Library of Congress (http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/). This attractive website is part of the Library of Congress site. It contains information from the Hispanic Reading Room and the Hispanic Division, special events and publications, guides and reference aids (including "HLAS Online"), information about the Luso-Hispanic collections, the Hispanic Reading Room reference collection, and other related LC collections (American Folklife Center, Manuscript, Microform, Newspapers and Current Periodicals, Prints and Photographs, Rare Books, Exhibits and Pictorial). The site also provides selected links to other Latin American resources on the Internet (special projects, other libraries, websites and gophers of the Americas, and Mexican search engines). One of the most important features of this site is its electronic publication of "HLAS Online" (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas). This is the electronic version of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the premier reviewing source for publications about Latin America since 1938, with approximately 5000+ scholar-contributed annotations added each year. "HLAS Online" is an extremely valuable resource for Latin American Studies and its release has ensured improved currency (with weekly and daily updates, and with access to unannotated entries still in the editorial process), and enhanced searching (with options for basic or advanced and with ranking by relevancy). For an excellent comparison of the web-based "HLAS Online" with the CD-ROM version, HLAS/CD, and HLAS via telnet to LOCIS, there is a link to Sue Mundell's paper (delivered at the SALALM 1996 conference). The Hispanic Reading Room site also allows the user to select an online version in Spanish.

3. HAPI Online (http://hapi.gseis.ucla.edu/). This web version of the Hispanic American Periodicals Index is an enhancement of the well-known print publication produced at the UCLA Latin American Center. This unequalled index continues to stand out as the single most important guide to journal articles published on Latin America. Although subscription access via the Internet has been available since 1991, HAPI Online, the newest electronic version of the index, allows even more sophisticated searching, downloading and delivery of information. HAPI Online is available by subscription (the free trial period ended in August). Other types of electronic access include Telnet access, access through RLG (CitaDel service) or MELVYL (free to University of California schools only), HAPI on CD-ROM (part of Latin American Studies, vol. 1), system-wide web purchase, and purchase of tapes of the database. The contents of the index are comprised of full bibliographic citations of book reviews, articles, and original literary works and other materials taken from over 400 social science and humanities journals. The subject headings are assigned by contributing Latin American specialists and the HAPI editorial staff from a customized subject thesaurus and name list which is also available online. The coverage in all versions of HAPI is from 1970 to the present, and the database contains over 210,000 citations with about 8,000 records added each year. New features have been added such as document delivery via an online order form for many items in the database ($10.00 per article plus mailing or fax costs). The web version of HAPI has several advantages: the index is updated semi-monthly; searches can combine subject and other elements in the record; there are date and some language delimiters (full language delimiters from 1996 to the present); records can be displayed in citation or full record format; the Online Thesaurus (no Name Authority) and Journals Indexed lists are included; and the main Spanish and Portuguese headings have been translated. There is a capability of creating customized bibliographies for printing or for sending them to a remote e-mail address for downloading. Subscriptions to the web index are available at three rates (with options for individual or institutional levels): an annual site license, a monthly subscription, or scholar's rate. This index in any of its various electronic formats is an essential resource for Latin American studies research.

4. Internet Resources for Latin America (http://lib.nmsu.edu/subject/bord/laguia). Written and maintained since 1994 by SALALM member Molly Molloy, this guide is an exceptional resource for Latin America-related Internet information and it has evolved into one of the most important starting points for Latin American research and networking. As with the UT-LANIC site, a great number of Latin American home pages link to this site, making it a standard reference for any guided electronic exploration of Latin American area studies on the Internet. The e-resources in this document are divided into several sections, including directories and indexes, databases and reference sources, online news and academic information, national and international organizations, lists of listservs and newsgroups, and, an especially useful and unique section on networking and Internet services in Latin America (with links to sites that track Latin American network growth and access). The guide begins with an introductory commentary that summarizes the growth of Internet in Latin America, describes a wide range of Latin American internetworking activities (professional, institutional, governmental, organizational), and identifies strategies for keeping up with this rapidly changing technology. The subsequent sections primarily consist of links to other (web, gopher or telnet) sites with brief descriptions of the site's content, quality, URL, contact name and e-mail address. This guide, albeit necessarily selective, is a significant contribution to electronic support for research. It can be used as a tool to assist librarians and others to keep current about growth in access and usage of the net, and it can assist scholars of Latin America more fully utilize and benefit from this rapidly changing, non-traditional research, publishing and dissemination environment. In addition, the author's suggestions for further reading serve to identify the major issues and context for future Internet products, services, repercussions and usage. Several other web resources of note have been developed by Molloy and are available at the New Mexico State University Library site (http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/mmolloy/). They include several unique and useful resources: Andanzas al Web Latino (described below), Mexico News Archives, Best of Mexico, Border and Latin American Information, and teaching information (these files/sites were developed for courses she taught at the NMSU Library, on "Information Literacy," and at the Institute for Technology Assisted Learning, on "Electronic Library Resources for Distance Education," and "Connectivity Issues."

5. Andanzas al Web Latino (http://lib.nmsu.edu/subject/bord/latino.html). This site, published on the web in March 1997 by Molly Molloy, brings together notable e-resources by/about Latinos and Hispanics in the U.S., with a special emphasis on the U.S.-Mexico border region (many sites mentioned in this guide were recently removed from Internet Resources for Latin America). The guide, while still a "work-in-progress", is an extensive and substantial compilation of links to Latino/Hispanic and border studies and contains links to 169 websites, lists and newsgroups. It is divided into seven categories: Puertas Abiertas (Major Latino Gateways), Puertas al Sur (Gateways to Latin America), Puertas Culturales (Cultural links), Puertas Politicas (Political links), Puertas Economics (Economic links), and listservs and newsgroups.

The above column was originally published in the SALALM Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 2 (Oct. 1998): 38-40.

E-Resources for Latin American Studies
Environment Resources

By Rhonda L. Neugebauer

The environment is a complex and pervasive issue. It intersects with nearly all human activities, including the economic, political, cultural and social aspects of our existence. A short time ago, substantial discussion of the environment was uncommon, and proponents of such discussion were often labeled "special interests," or worse, and most likely dismissed. Now, expressions of concern about the impact or sustainability of the environment, are much more common in many different settings: industry and business, government planning, scientific and academic circles, advertising, philanthropy, schools and universities, labor unions, and even in travel agencies. Acknowledgement of this increased importance has also sparked a host of new "green" business interests (waste management and recycling, tourism, organic agriculture, self-help exchanges, and other types of sustainable commerce and development). Without a doubt, the environment effects us and we effect it.

On one level, discussion or study of the environment encompasses issues like the exploitation and appropriate use of natural resources. On another level, the discussion and research agenda also involve such issues as adequate conservation and preservation measures, and the groups that advocate more caution. If we are to understand the environment, we must uncover and study its relationship to many complicated issues which have political, economic and humanitarian considerations (industrialization, modernization, urbanization, indigenous and ancestral rights, national sovereignty and international relations, wildlife and habitat protection), and heed the growing calls for sustainable development, responsible commerce, and more judicious utilization of natural resources.

All of these issues are important in the study of the environment. And, in Latin America, as in the rest of the world, all of these issues and aspects of the environment have their proponents and detractors. The opposing interests of use/exploitation and conservation/protection proponents have finally been put on the table for discussion, due, in no small part, to the availability and utilization of Internet technology by non-mainstream, activist local groups and international movements built in the last few decades. Just a few years ago, such groups and individuals rarely had access to channels of distribution to disseminate their viewpoints, let alone channels with the speed, efficiency, and far-reaching attributes of the Internet. Now, not surprisingly, many of these activist groups have taken advantage of the Internet's more level playing field to distribute their information to supporters and allied networks effectively, quickly, and cheaply.

In this column, I have chosen to highlight the websites of one individual (Eco-Travels) and several groups that are notable for their environmental concerns. The sites have an activist perspective, advocate preserving and respecting natural resources, and have identified the Internet/WWW as a tool to be used in carrying out new forms of education, information dissemination, coordination, and networking. The development of these web resources is an extension of these groups' efforts to build and publicize alternative and sustainable development practices and are powerful testimonials to their beliefs and to their new skills and methods of dissemination.

1. Eco Travels in Latin America (http://www.planeta.com/). This elaborate, beautifully designed and rapidly-expanding website is published and maintained by Ron Mader, freelance environmental writer and journalist who has an extensive background of study, reporting and travel in Latin America. The site, initiated in 1995, aims to connect travelers, writers, researchers and tour providers, and to provide current information and selected archives about environmentally friendly travel and socially responsible tourism in Latin America. A majority of the information at this site is original material, but there are also links to relevant sites with travel and environment news and resources. The overall writing and coverage of ecotourism topics at this site is in-depth, creative and sometimes provocative. The focus is on Mexico, the U.S.-Mexico border region, and Central America (especially Honduras), with lesser coverage of South America. A cornerstone of the site is the archive of issues of the quarterly print and e-newsletter, El Planeta Platica=The Earth Speaks, begun in print in January 1994, and established as a component of this site in March 1995. The newsletter was created to help travelers to Latin America become aware of the environmental impact of tourism and to offer resources about travel/tourism from the perspectives of journalists, researchers, travel providers, and environmentalists. Organized by themes relating to tourism/travel, the newsletter contains original articles, editorials, and book reviews by Mader and others. The sections of the e-newsletter, along with its frequently updated pages of related articles, bibliographies and links, are interconnected with other local website resources and this results in broad coverage of this topic. This website is divided into many interesting subsections filled with abundant original resources. Several resource pages within the website are worth mentioning. "Cybercafes in the Americas" is a list, by country, of 30 public access Internet points in Latin America. There is an index to El Planeta Platica=The Earth Speaks. The "Eco Travel Resources" page has reviews of books, classifieds, recipes and a directory of Spanish language schools. The "Eco Travel Destinations" page contains more resource pages organized by region, including the "Borderland Environmental Archives," an impressive collection of articles, bibliographies, working notes, contact lists, and links to related agencies, institutions, publications and individual homepages. The "Eco Travel Topics" section consists of four cross-referenced thematic indexes of the site and newsletter (Resources for Journalists, Greening Trade and Technologies in the Americas, Latin America and the Oil Industry, and Coffee and Agricultural Issues in the Americas). There are also five topical pages of "Links to Related Sites" including the subsections "Sustainable Development and the Americas," "Exploring Ecotourism," "Environment," "Links to Latin American Information," and the "Eco Travels Center," which is a page of links to the site's "highlights." The "Condor Awards" page lists this website's selections for "best of the web." With its overall depth of coverage, crisp design and layout, easy browsability, searchable index, and convenient inter-connectivity between indexes, resources, links and articles, this website appears to have successfully met a need for reporting news and views on environment-friendly travel and advocacy. While the site is available free on the WWW, this commercial site supports itself by raising revenues through subscriptions to the newsletter ($25/year), banner advertisements, and email/web links from the Spanish language school directory. Conscientious travelers, as well as researchers, students and others, are wise to consult this site before departing. The site is translated into Spanish and German. Contact: Ron Mader, ron@greenbuilder.com.

2. Environment and Latin America Network (ELAN) (http://csf.colorado.edu/elan/index.html). This open, unmoderated listserv mailing list was created in July 1994 to facilitate discussion and promote dissemination of information/news among diverse groups: scholars, environmental activists, practitioners, and others interested in environmental issues and their impact in Latin America. This network-based dialogue was initiated by the Environment and Natural Resources Working Group, a section of the Latin American Studies Association. Its editors, David Barkin, an economist, and Timmons Roberts, a sociologist, are university professors and members of LASA. The scope of the discussion on this listserv is broad and covers many topics. As with any listserv, the information and messages are contributed by subscribers and focus on topics determined by their interests. With almost 1000 subscribers in various professions and disciplines, ELAN brings together a diverse group of committed, creative, energetic, opinionated, learned individuals, many of whom seem to have serious, long-standing, and ardent interest in understanding the environment and its sustainability. Moreover, whether their slant is biological, ecological, political, economic, sociological or recreational, the discussants' apparent enthusiasm for sharing resources and information about scholarship, activism, news, and announcements, is matched by the collective agreement for the need to protect or, at least cautiously, utilize the disparate ecosystems of Latin America. A day's worth of messages may include analysis and/or commentary on current research, books, data sources, contacts, and information about noteworthy developments in governmental policies, economic issues, political activities, preservation, conservation, and/or activism. The layout and design of this site are simple. A main page has several dozen internal links to the monthly folders of archives and to twenty-seven external links (some to sites not necessarily as highly focused on the environment as this one). The archives are the backbone of the site. The ELAN discussion group mail messages from 1994 to the present, along with some contributed papers and data sets, are archived at the website of the Communications for a Sustainable Future. Messages from January 1996 to the present (having been converted to HTML) are organized into folders by month and linked to the main webpage. The earlier messages (1994-1995), are also arranged into folders chronologically by month, and are available through gopher and ftp at csf.colorado.edu. The entire site can be searched by word or phrase. To subscribe: listserv@csf.colorado.edu. To post: elan@csf.colorado.edu. Contacts are: David Barkin barkin@servidor.dgsca.unam.mx, Timmons Roberts, timmons@mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu.

3. EnviroLink Network (http://www.envirolink.org). EnviroLink is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing information on all aspects of the environment (earth elements: air, water, earth, fire; and living creatures: flora and fauna). Its site has archived and/or indexed a significant amount of full-text material on environmental issues in Latin American countries. The EnviroLink Network was created in 1991 by university student (now Executive Director) Josh Knauer as a mailing list on environmental issues, and has developed into a vast resource and forum for community sharing, discussion, resource-sharing, and unified planning/action. This site functions as a clearinghouse of information resources on the environment, and confidently proclaims itself "the largest on-line environmental information resource on the planet." At the least, the EnviroLink organization has produced a truly refreshing network and website. With its creative use of local reporting, its archive of original information resources, and its meta search engine capabilities, it comes close to using the website format to its full "connective" potential. The site brings together a large number of widely dispersed environmental action groups and individuals, and compiles their research, advocacy, action campaign information, and local news/reporting into resources on this website. In addition to this vast array of locally contributed, original resources, and links to other sites, several sections of this site contain useful information on Latin America. The easiest way to retrieve this information is by using the site's search engine on the "Search EnviroLink" page. This engine allows searching of this site or of a combination of sites from its meta-list of 14 selected environmental sites. In my search for Latin American related information, I found hundreds of hits on "Latin America" using both the local and the meta-list. Also, by searching the meta-list, I found 316 hits on Nicaragua, 872 on Peru, over 1000 on Mexico, and 266 on Cuba. This strong coverage of Latin America warrants checking this site for at least some specialized reference inquiries and/or research projects. In addition to its strong content base, the website is visually appealing. It has a very attractive and easily navigable layout. It has warm muted colors, lightly textured "earthy" backgrounds, and superb original artwork based on ancient designs-all intended to project the designers' values of promoting sustainable societies through connecting with activist and other "earth-conscious" communities. Several sections of this site are worth mentioning: "Express Yourself," an online discussion forum; "What Soars, What Snores and What Bites," a compilation of candid reviews on sites that work on or effect environmental issues; "EnviroArts Gallery," a gallery of original art works with a "reverence for nature;" "EnviroIink Library," a substantial and growing full-text and hyperlinked resource covering hundreds of topics, organizations, publications, educational tools, and background articles; "EnviroLink News Service," a daily international wire service, offered by exclusive arrangement with the Environment News Service (an independently owned and operated news service); and "Sustainable Business Network," journal and related resources meant to promote socially responsible business practices. This site is bound to provide leads if not in-depth information to answer those difficult questions on the environment in Latin America. Contact: Josh Knauer, josh@envirolink.org.

4. The Latin American Alliance (LAA) (http://www.latinsynergy.org). This site is published under the auspices of the World Stewardship Institute, a nonprofit environmental education and advocacy organization established in 1995 by Warren Linney and Richard Coates, longtime educators and activists. The Latin American Alliance is a project of the WSI, and has as its mission the development of environmental and sustainable commerce information for Latin American countries. LAA, just this year, began to build a network of non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, and businesses with sustainable development practices, and developed an information infrastructure of support for the growth and outreach of these associated groups. This website is the cornerstone of that cooperation and collaboration. The purpose of this site is to showcase nongovernmental organizations and educational institutions involved in environmental projects and help them build an Internet presence, while at the same time supporting the growth of socially responsible business services and products through contact with members of this network. The website contains twenty-two homepages of Latin American NGO's (in its "NGO's Country Directory") and a huge contact list of environmental organizations and institutions in the world, as well as many topical sections. In a series of broadly cast subject pages there are articles on biodiversity, conservation, environmental issues, and business strategies for social responsibility and sustainable management. There are also dozens of links and/or articles on eco-tourism, travel in Central America, McDonald's beef purchasing practices, and several pages of support for website design and development (computer graphics, search engines, newspapers and news services, and HTML reference works, guides and authoring tools). This site is only a few months old, but I think they have done a commendable job of collecting, mounting and organizing information. The pages of web tools that are meant to support budding Latin American NGO web authors and webmasters, are especially well-done. However, in order to become a solid content-rich site that gets repeat usage from non-affiliates, the site needs to clearly designate its important and/or unique subject areas, to supply explanations of link hierarchies, to describe the purpose of certain pages, and to indicate the source of articles. These changes would improve overall coherency, allow the user to interact with the pages more effectively, and signal the user about what to expect from a link or a page. Further, to improve interactivity and browsability, several pages need to be cleared of typos, misnamed or miscoded links, and mismatched fonts/styles. Some simple, uniform navigational icons/tools on each page, also, would greatly improve the user friendliness of this site. Finally, the background color (black) hampers printing, and the use of light colors for fonts (for example, yellow on the main page) makes some text difficult to read and to print. On the whole, this website represents an important and successful organizational contribution in its outreach to NGOs and to sustainable businesses. And, it appears that the LAA network has developed an electronic resource with great potential to attract many more Latin American environment-conscious and activist groups to the Internet while assisting them in their development of contacts, commerce and information exchange with businesses engaged in sustainable management and development practices. This site is translated into Spanish, French and German. Contact: Joseph A. Wing, joseph@ecostewards.org.

5. These three groups are among the strongest and probably the most well known environmental action groups/networks in the world. While their programs and emphases may differ, their information resources are meant to inform, expose, motivate and create new models of advocacy and grassroots empowerment. Through these websites, many small groups (including several from Latin America) have found an Internet presence, have formed networks of support, have released important information on abuse of the environment and of people, and have circumvented the negligible reporting of the mainstream media and the indifference of powerful politicians. The resources on the websites of these three groups offer convincing evidence that individual actions do count, that small organizations can successfully open new avenues in information dissemination, that heeding ecological considerations can benefit whole communities, that sustainable production and responsible commerce can impact larger networks of production, and, that everybody and everything in the world is connected (environment, wildlife, habitat, economics, politics, development, governments, cultures and human beings too).

EcoNet (http://www.econet.apc.org/). EcoNet is one of five divisions of the Institute for Global Communications (which is the U.S. member of the Association for Progressive Communications, a global network of independently operated progressive networks). The EcoNet section brings together organizations and individuals that work on environmental issues (including environmental justice, global warming, energy policy, rainforest preservation, legislative activities, water quality, toxics and environmental education). It is a massive undertaking to collect, archive and disseminate electronic information worldwide. With 10 APC member networks in Latin America, there is a large amount of information on Latin American environmental issues generated locally and given international access through EcoNet. Some features of EcoNet and IGC are available only to IGC members, while others are accessible by both members and non-members.

Greenpeace (http://greenpeace.org). This website lists the mission and goals, policies, history, organization, research agenda, funding sources, and advocacy projects of the renowned activist environmental group. The site's coverage of Latin American topics is limited to information that overlaps with Greenpeace projects and concerns. Searches of this site by country name (Mexico, Peru, Cuba) produced a total of 200 hits related to global warming, nuclear power and fuel dumping, pollution, and habitat protection.

Rainforest Action Network (http://www.ran.org/). This site is a beautifully designed, well-thought-out, graphically appealing display detailing the organization's international programs, actions, campaigns, demonstrations, and background educational material. The mission of RAN is to protect the world's tropical rainforests, and support their inhabitants' rights through education, grassroots organizing and non-violent direct action; they also work with consumers and community groups to increase the public's awareness of how their choices may effect the rainforest and its inhabitants. One of RAN's major projects is the preservation of the Amazon, and there is plenty of information here on the struggle to protect that region and its native forest-dwelling people. RAN has developed actions, campaigns and information resources on several Latin American countries, including Brazil, Central America (Belize, Honduras, Costa Rica) and Ecuador.

The above column was originally published in the SALALM Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 3 (Dec. 1997): 68-71.

E-Resources for Latin American Studies
Indigenous Peoples

By Rhonda L. Neugebauer

At times, visitors from the urbanized, industrialized societies look at indigenous peoples/communities as objects of curiosity and wonder from an ancient time, and they are sometimes surprised that there is so much to admire in these communities' modern-day values, norms and lifestyles. As students of these peoples/communities, we often seek to answer lingering questions about the history of indigenous nations, their ancient knowledge and belief systems, and the impact of colonization on the "loss" of their culture. Academics in many disciplines have devoted years of study in order to understand and explain indigenous practices and philosophy, and their studies have produced volumes of materials from a myriad of learned perspectives that seek to accurately portray the history and culture of indigenous communities. Nevertheless, even the best students of indigenous issues (anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, economists, and, even activists) often fail to grasp the delicate balance of events, environment and beliefs that coalesce into an indigenous worldview. This fact was made clear to me this month (Jan. 1998) as I traveled in Quintana Roo and Yucatan, Mexico on a brief study tour of "Mayan civilization". Our group of students and professionals visited Maya families, villages, and "abandoned" religious centers, and learned about their life-sustaining beliefs, customs and ceremonies from the perspective of a Maya scholar of oral tradition, history and culture. Our teacher, Maestro Panfilo Novelo, revealed a perspective that was uniquely Maya and pointedly indigenous without completely divorcing it from the surrounding "modern," Western, Hispanic, non-Yucatecan experiences and culture. He eloquently portrayed the complexities of Maya scholarship and beliefs, and explained that the Maya perspective of history is extremely important, yet oftentimes it is ignored. He encouraged us to continue exploring the indigenous perspective in the region and reminded us that the Maya have contributed and continue to contribute essential interpretations of their own history, legacy, accomplishments and current circumstances.

With that thought in mind, I chose to review seven websites that facilitate research on indigenous issues and that offer an autochthonous perspective on modern-day indigenous peoples and communities. These sites focus on the study and support of indigenous peoples and communities, and proudly assert the indigenous perspective of tradition, struggle, survival, and rehabilitation. Amidst the large amount of information generated, released, archived, and disseminated on the Internet about indigenous peoples and related issues, these sites are noteworthy documentation, testimonial and advocacy efforts.

While this column barely skims the surface of the web-based information available on indigenous communities/nations/peoples, these e-resources can be used as starting points for research, networking and connecting to related sites, information and discussions. The reviewed sites include projects by a research center, several support and solidarity organizations, a progressive electronic network, and a host of volunteer undertakings by individuals who have contributed their time and expertise to develop forums for indigenous thought and action. Each of these electronic projects are distinct and substantial additions to the complex and ongoing tasks of documenting indigenous efforts to preserve their culture, land, intellectual patrimony, and human rights, and disseminating their own perspective of their history, ethnicity, conditions and community.

It is certainly a new phenomenon to observe some indigenous groups and their supporters utilize the most current information technologies to establish their presence and to network with organizations that promote their insight, struggles and experiences. As an example of the proliferation of materials, networks and information supportive of the indigenous struggle in Chiapas, I include a webpage that highlights the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico entitled "Zapatistas in Cyberspace: a guide to analysis and resources." It is an important document and introduction to the several new media that have been utilized in an effort to quickly disseminate information about events in Chiapas (since 1994), from the perspectives of the affected indigenous communities, the guerrilla organizations, the civilian population, and the supporters of the uprising. Of course, with the abundant number of sites and resources available on events in Chiapas, it deserves its own column (which I will tackle in a later column). Still, with a quick glance at this guide, one can immediately discern that the voice of the indigenous activist has reached far beyond what was possible just a few years ago, and that new Internet technologies have provided additional tools to use in researching and understanding the indigenous perspective, no matter how short our visit to their "domain."

1. Fourth World Documentation Project: Indigenous Peoples' Information for the Online Community) (http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/fwdp.html). Begun in 1992, this project, also called the Chief George Manuel Library and Archive, is an ambitious documentary undertaking sponsored by the Center for World Indigenous Studies (http://www.halcyon.com/FWDP/cwis.info), and directed by John H. Burrows. The FWDP has compiled and made available information about indigenous peoples' ideas, knowledge and history of struggle around the world. On this award-winning website, there are over 500 full-text documents, including essays, accords, position papers, declarations, resolutions, organizational information, treaties, UN documents, speeches, letters and agreements. These materials are important for research on Indian society and governing, inter-tribal organization, and the history of Indian nations' political, cultural, strategic and human rights struggles. The FWDP has collected important documents from nations and organizations in many parts of the world and made them available on the Internet. The Latin American section, "North, Central and South American Documents," contains several dozen documents on indigenous groups in Nicaragua, Mexico, Ecuador, and Panama. Other sections of the archives are: European and Asian Documents; Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian Documents; Trial and Inter-Tribal Resolutions and Papers; Internationally Focused Documents; and Treaties, Agreements and Other Constructive Arrangements. There is also a "What's New" section and a search engine for the FWDP Archives. The search engine identified several dozen hits on Latin American topics, but sometimes offered peripherally related material. While this archive contains some singularly significant primary documents, its use for specific Latin American topics is limited because of its narrow coverage of Latin American indigenous peoples. The layout is simple, the site is easy to navigate, and the archived materials provide valuable documentation for the study of indigenous groups and nations, with major emphasis on the U.S. and Canada. At this time, the focus of this site seems to be U.S. and Canadian nations with a small number of documents on Latin America. And, while many of the documents provide primary evidence of activism and struggle, the currency of the site and its updating are lagging (the most current date I could find was March 5, 1997). Given the proclaimed world-wide scope of these archives, I think this site holds some promise for the future, once stable routines of updating and currency are implemented. Contact: John Burrows, jburrows@halcyon.com.

2. Indigenous Peoples (http://www.igc.org/igc/issues/ip/or.html). The Indigenous Peoples website is a section of the website of the Institute for Global Communications (which is the U.S. member of the Association for Progressive Communications, a global network of independently operated progressive networks). This site contains 34 annotated descriptions and links to organizations that focus on indigenous issues. Among the sites listed here, only 3 sites provide primary coverage of Latin America, but several of the links are for organizations with some documents/files on Latin America. Several of the sites mentioned on this page are reviewed in this column (SAIIC, NativeWeb, NativeNet, CWIS).

3. NativeWeb (http://www.nativeweb.org); South and Meso American Indian Rights Center, SAIIC (http://www.nativeweb.org/saiic/); and Abya Yala Net (http://www.nativeweb.org/abyayala). Closely interconnected and published as collaborative efforts, these three websites highlight their work, resources and contacts as supporters of indigenous groups/rights. The organizations are closely affiliated and their respective websites provide complementary coverage of indigenous issues. NativeWeb covers indigenous issues throughout the world, some of which is about Latin America. SAIIC actively disseminates information, especially current events and news, about Latin American indigenous struggles. And, the Abya Yala Net provides extensive resources on Latin American indigenous communities, including primary documents/declarations, searchable indexes, search engines, links to related sites on Latin America, and information about organizational and financial support for indigenous organizing.

NativeWeb (http://www.nativeweb.org). NativeWeb provides broad coverage of indigenous issues and serves as sponsor of the other two sites (which are more focused on Latin America). This site, published by a collective of contributors since May 1994, offers several categories of information: the Resource Center, the Community Center, General Site Information, and a list of "Ongoing Projects and Sites by NativeWeb Collective Members." The three primary indexes (Subject Index, Nations Index and Geographic Region Index) and the Search Forms are available on a left-side box (frame) on most pages. The Resource Center also provides access to Indexes, Search forms (with options to search all affiliated NativeWeb sites, including Abya Yala Net and SAIIC), and has links to "Abya Yala Net," "Law and Legal Issues" and "Tracing Your Roots." The Community Center section contains "Message Boards," "Events," "Announcements," "Job Listings," "Email Lists and Archives," and "News Sources." The General Site Information contains information on the NativeWeb community, the history, new activities, awards, volunteer activities, contacts list, a personalization page and statistics. This site contains many unique resources compiled by specialists in order to facilitate research and communication among indigenous peoples. Plans for future enhancements include providing electronic access to native newsletters, journals and bibliographies, and more links to related archives, news groups, and listserv lists. Contact for technical questions & general mail: David Cole, decole@uc.syr.edu.

The South and Meso American Indian Rights Center (SAIIC) (http://www.nativeweb.org/saiic/). Since its founding in Bolivia in 1983, the Center has disseminated news and analysis and provided educational and activist resources to support indigenous rights, self-determination and organizing. This website highlights several noteworthy SAIIC projects and publications, especially the quarterly journal Abya Yala News. The site also offers an array of materials on Latin American indigenous groups, territorial rights, the environment, and autonomous development issues that reflect the Center's indigenous perspective and advocacy work. Among the unique materials located on this website are special reports ("Indigenous Rights in Brazil" is available at the site, and "Indigenous Peoples and Biodiversity" is forthcoming), selections from and an index to the quarterly journal Abya Yala News, and special action alerts that describe the ongoing work of the Center and affiliated organizations. Other sections of the site describe SAIIC projects and activities: to develop an international network of indigenous groups and scholars; to operate a listserv called saiic-l (send a subscription request to majordomo@igc.apc.org) and a PeaceNet conference (saiic.indio); to develop resources for organizing (books, videos, posters); to provide technical assistance in computers, electronic communications, fundraising and journalism to indigenous communities and organizations; to facilitate communication between indigenous groups and with environmental and human rights organizations, policy institutions and foundations; to maintain a reference library of periodicals, audio-visuals and books in Oakland, California; to arrange cultural exchanges between indigenous peoples; to participate in organizing international meetings (such as The First Continental Conference on 500 Years of Indian Resistance in 1990); and to build a coalition of indigenous groups (Continental Indian Coordinating Commission, a 26-nation organization founded in 1992). This site has a simple layout and contains pages that serve to promote their work: outreach, news, publicity, connections to others, and activism on indigenous issues. Contact: SAIIC, saiic@igc.apc.org.

Abya Yala Net (http://www.nativeweb.org/abyayala/). The Abya Yala Net, a project of SAIIC and "in collaboration with NativeWeb," focuses on the indigenous peoples of Mexico, Central and South America providing information about their struggles as well as relevant cultural and organizational background information. The name Abya Yala means "continent of life" in the language of the Kuna people of Panama and Colombia, and is used to denote the website's coverage of the Americas. The site's developers are Marc Becker and Gilles Combrisson, both of whom have academic backgrounds in Latin American Studies. Since Sept. 1996, they have coordinated a volunteer effort to develop the resources at this site and encourage its use for dissemination and research. Abya Yala Net offers server space free of charge to indigenous organizations, and several Latin American groups have websites hosted here. In a fashion similar to NativeWeb, the information at this site is arranged in several broad categories: Geographic Regions, Nations/Peoples, Subjects, Declarations and Organizations. These categories allow access to the site's archive of documents and to related sites. Sub-categories, under each Region or Nation, offer additional links to related remote sites. The subcategories on a given page may include up to twenty-three topics such as Anthropology and Archaeology, Books and Articles, Indigenous Cultures, News and Media, Newsletters, Travel and Tourism, or there may be only one subcategory. In some cases the "level" of subcategory seems unnecessary given the small number of resources linked to several of the subcategory pages and the time it takes to link to each page. The coverage in the Geographic Regions index is most in-depth for Central American topics. The index of Nations/Peoples, strongest on the Maya and Quechua peoples, also includes coverage of Aymara, Aztec (Nauhua), Garifuna, Guarani, Kawésqar, Kuna, Lenca, Mapuche, Quechua, Taino, Tarahumara (Raramuri), U'wa, and Yanomami. The coverage of Nations/Peoples is uneven (some Nations have as many as 12 subcategories with many links; others have only one or two subcategories and few links). The Subject Index contains 15 categories (Arts & Humanities, Business, Computers & Internet, Education, Historical Material, Information Sites, Languages & Linguistics, Law & Legal Issues, Libraries & Collections, News & Media, Organizations, Reference Materials, Science, Society & Culture). The Declarations section contains 12 documents, consisting primarily of manifestos on national and international events and statements of unity and solidarity with indigenous organizing and activism. A strong part of the site, the Organizations section, contains 28 links to related organizations, four of which are sponsored by Abya Yala Net. One amply developed portion of the site is the section on the Abya Yala Fund, an organization devoted to helping indigenous groups with fundraising for development projects in Latin America. *The Abya Yala Fund materials in this section of the site explain the funded projects and selected activities of the organization in support of indigenous groups. There are descriptions of the governing board, ongoing projects, funding, proposal guidelines and application procedures, and there are lists of related links. Any category or subcategory, or the entire site and the affiliated NativeWeb can be searched with a form that searches keywords in documents at the two sites. The search results are weighted and displayed with a description of the matching sites, which is a nice feature of the site. Designed with consistency and simplicity, this site has a running left-side bar (frame) with the table of contents. The frame is consistently displayed and allows navigation to all sections at any time. To facilitate searching, the search form is available on all index pages. This site is published in English with a Spanish version in development. Contacts: Abya Yala Net, abyayala@nativeweb.org; Marc Becker, mbecker@ilstu.edu (Webmaster); Gilles Combrisson, gillesco@ix.netcom.com (Webmaster); SAIIC at saiic@igc.apc.org (Sponsor).

4. NativeNet(http://www.fdl.cc.mn.us/natnet). NativeNet was established in 1989 by Gary Trujillo following a Tribal Lands conference that discussed ways of utilizing new technologies in support of linking native peoples and developing resources related to their lives. Its purpose is two-fold: to utilize electronic media to develop connections between people and organizations working on indigenous issues by distributing information and analysis from the indigenous point of view, and to promote active interchange and conversation among and between Native people, activists and other interested parties. The resources and discussion are primarily about U.S./North American native peoples, with some limited coverage of Latin America and the rest of the world. The e-mail lists (listservs) are very active and contain engaging discussion of Native American struggles, rights, and organizational philosophies. The core resources at this site are the specialized discussion groups (and archives of those discussions) which contain some discussion and news about Latin American indigenous peoples. NativeNet started with one electronic mailing list in 1989 and now hosts six specialized mailing lists/discussion groups and their associated archives: NATIVE-L (news and information); NATCHAT (discussion); NAT-LANG (language); NAT-HLTH (health); NAT-EDU (education); NAT-1492 (Columbus Quincentenary). The archives are also maintained online at (listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu) and contain several years worth of exchanges between subscribers to these specialized "mailing list" forums. An important section of the site contains links to background articles, papers and other relevant indigenous information on the web. The coverage of Latin America is sparse, with only five links in the Central America section (two of which didn't connect) primarily on the Aztec, Maya, and Mapuche. The server for this site is provided by Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. Contact: Gary Trujillo, gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Webmaster).

5. Zapatistas in Cyberspace, a guide to analysis and resources http://www.eco.utexas.edu/homepages/faculty/cleaver/zapsincyber.html). Written and published by Harry M. Cleaver, associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, this document is an excellent annotated guide to 64 Zapatista related resources. It includes links to articles, Internet lists and newsgroups, WWW sites, and archives. Published on the Internet since fall 1996, the guide links to many important and very active groups and websites in support of indigenous movements in Mexico, and contains descriptions of the related resources on one continuous-page. This guide, issued as a report for Accion Zapatista de Austin, an active solidarity committee in Austin, Texas, is intended to facilitate gathering and disseminating information about the Zapatistas and democratic movements in Mexico, and is an superb pathfinder for the tremendous amount of current information (news releases, communiques, action alerts, mobilization notices, discussion lists) available in support of the indigenous social struggles in Chiapas. Accion Zapatista also sponsors two very active mailing lists, Chiapas95, which distributes news and communiques about Chiapas and Mexico culled from other lists on the Internet (and is not a discussion group), and Zapatismo, which promotes discussion and analysis about Zapatista revolutionary organizing and its application to other countries/circumstances (and is a discussion group). Contact Harry M. Cleaver, hmcleave@eco.utexas; and Accion Zapatista (http://www.utexas.edu/student/nave/).

The above column was originally published in the SALALM Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 4 (Feb. 1998): 96-99.

E-Resources for Latin American Studies
Latin American Library Collections Websites

By Rhonda L. Neugebauer

This column brings together fifty-one U.S library sponsored websites that support research on Latin America. These websites or homepages, created primarily by Latin Americanist librarians, provide convenient access points to many specialized Latin American resources, guide users to local as well as remote library holdings, and present a myriad of information options to facilitate study and research on Latin American topics. This new electronic medium has enabled librarians to disseminate information about collections, holdings and services that might not otherwise be easily obtained by users, and has compelled us to compile and organized information in unique ways to reach new audiences and fulfill new expectations about our services.

Through the development of these websites and the creation of access to many types of electronic files, guides, catalogs, indexes, lists of links, and databases, librarians and other Latin Americanist specialists have contributed greatly to the quality of Latin American-related resources on the Internet and to the interconnectedness of its massive physical and intellectual resources. Many of us have successfully applied our creative genius, instructional prowess, specialized subject and language expertise, and design talents to the development of these sites. And, the result is that there are many forms and types of original and creative work on these sites. There are online versions of guides, finding aids, bibliographies, exhibits, syllabi, collection descriptions and policy statements. There is an exciting new project, the LA Government Documents Project, which supports research by linking directly to governmental resources in Latin American countries. Several pages provide lists of sites that further sort, categorize and evaluate Latin American content sites on the Internet. In all, our web presence showcases some of our new products and skills, and gives increased visibility to our resources and services. The professional contribution of SALALM librarians and other specialists in the development, as well as the evaluation of new information products and services, has the potential to have a great impact on academic research in our field.

Note about the annotations: It was difficult, at times, to attribute authorship definitively and/or to distinguish between authorship of the content and authorship of the website HTML code. Moreover, several of the publications that are offered on the Internet sites listed here, are online versions of handouts, guides, and finding aids that probably were utilized long before the introduction of the institution's Latin American website. And, as with many library publications, the page or online file may be an amalgam of the work of current and former librarians at the institution, or may represent some type of inter-institutional collaboration. In the annotations of the websites, I identify the names of authors, compilers and webmasters-if they are known to me, or if their names are listed on the website (of course space considerations prohibit listing the address and author of each page at all the sites). While I strove for accuracy, the errors that may exist are unintentional and will be corrected with any future version of this list (including an HTML version in preparation).

The list of websites is roughly alphabetical by name of the library or institution:

1. University of Arizona Libraries, "Latin America, Spain and Portugal: Library and Internet Resources"(http://dizzy.library.arizona.edu/users/ppromis/homepg.html). This page contains a brief profile of the LA collections, and offers several categories of links: major websites, Chicano/Hispano Studies, Civilizations, Economic Development, Government and Political Science, History, Language, Miscellanea, and information on Spain and Portugal.

2. Arizona State University Libraries, "Latin American-Related Resources on the Internet" (http://www.asu.edu/lib/hayden/ref/soc/LAM.htm).

3. Brigham Young University, Library Information Network, "Latin American Studies" (http://lib.byu.edu/resource/history/international/index.html).

4. Brown University, John Carter Brown Library. (http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/). The John Carter Brown Library is an advanced center for research in history and the humanities, with an extensive collection of rare books (45,000), reference works (20,000), and primary historical materials that document European discovery, exploration, travel, settlement and colonization in the Western Hemisphere. The Library's website provides descriptions of the collection, the library programs and operations, the fellowship competition, the publication program, the JCB Associates group, and the governance of the Library. There is a link to an announcement of their new publication, European Americana : a chronological guide to works printed in Europe relating to the Americas, 1493-1750, a six-volume bibliographic guide to the printed record of European publishing about the Americas (http://www.newsbank.com/readex/scholarly/euroam.html).

5. University of California, Berkeley, "UCB Library Collections in Latin American Studies" (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Collections/LatinAm/index.html). This website is accented with attractive Mexican designs and offers several categories of information: Collections and staff (including Carlos Delgado's dissertation proposal "Cooperative Exchange of Digital Documents Among Electronic Libraries: the case of Latin America"), Electronic Resources (LADB and LAS/NISC), Indexes (ARL), Internet Resources (LANIC), Publications (a Selected New Acquisitions List organized by month called "Biblio al Dia"), and Videography (Media Resources Center's selected list of Latin American related videos).

6. "Bancroft Collection, Latin Americana: Mexican and Central American Collections" (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BANC/banccoll/latin.html). The main page of this site describes the collections, services, and access to the Bancroft Library. The main page has a brief biographical sketch of Hubert Howe Bancroft (1832-1918), who, as a vendor, publisher, and historian, exhaustively collected printed and manuscript works about western North America (from Alaska to Panama). There is also information about consultation with Bancroft Library staff; library instruction sessions; online access; published guides, catalogs and special index files of holdings; and a bibliography of works about the library. The "Latin Americana" page contains a statement that describes the general characteristics and principles of the collection, the current collecting emphases as well as subject and format exclusions.

7. University of California, Berkeley, "Chicano Studies Library" (http://clnet.ucr.edu/library/csl/). The CLNET was created by Richard Chabran for the entire University of California system. Its pages interlink with some resources and files from other UC Chicano studies sites, and provide access to sections on Collections, Publications, Services, Access and Internet Resources.>

8. University of California, Los Angeles, "UCLA Library Collections and Internet Resources in: Latin American Studies" (http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/url/colls/latinamerica/index.html). This site consists of 37 links to gateways, guides, indexes, websites, journals, newspapers, libraries, institutions/organizations and other UCLA sites.

9. University of California, Los Angeles, "Chicano Studies Research Library" (http://latino.sscnet.ucla.edu/library/csrl/). This library, founded in 1969, is a special unit of the Chicano Studies Research Center and focuses on the Chicano/Mexican community in the U.S. Its website, developed by Richard Chabran (now at UC-Riverside), provides information on Library Services, the Collection (including its Collection Development Policy and statement about its relation to other UCLA libraries), the Reference Collection, Links to other Latino Research Collections, Access, and Internet Resources. There is some sharing of resources and web information with the UC-Berkeley, Chicano Studies Library and CLNET (see UC Berkeley, Chicano Studies Library).

10. University of California, San Diego, International Relations and Pacific Studies Library, "Latin America" (http://irpslibrary.ucsd.edu/LatinAmerica/LaAmGt.html). The three categories of links at this site, developed by Harold Colson, Head, International Relations and Pacific Studies Library, contain 16 links to academic sites, commercial sites and government/multilateral organizations. In this well-developed electronic library, there are Latin America-related resources in other sections, including Databases, Global News and IR/PS WWW Subject Links.

11. University of California, San Diego, Social Sciences and Humanities Library, "Spanish and Portuguese Page at UCSD" (http://gort.ucsd.edu/rsonn/lit.html) and "Languages and Literature Resources" (http://gort.ucsd.edu/dtweedy/hands/LatinAmerica.html).

12. University of California, Santa Barbara, "Information Resources on Latin American and Iberian Studies" (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/subj/lais.html). This site, written by Patrick Dawson, contains links to Gateways, Newspapers, Bibliographies, Miscelleanea, and UCSB Resources. In another page, "Literary Criticism: Latin American and Spanish Literature, Reference Guide" he lists beginning research tools as well as databases, dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks and bibliographies, and provides links to two catalogs (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/guides/latamlit.html). Nerea A. Llamas contributes two reciprocally linked pages to this site: "Information Resources for Spanish and Portuguese" and "Information Resources for Graduate Students in Spanish and Portuguese" (http://www.library.ucsb.edu/subj/spanish.html).

13. University of California, Santa Cruz, "Information Resources on Latin American & Iberian Studies" (http://www.ucsc.edu/lais.html).

14. Columbia University Libraries, "Area Studies--Latin American Studies" (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/area/LatinAmerica/main.html). This site contains many sections to assist users of the complex CU library website, including a search engine that quickly identified 1,338 matches on my "Latin America" search. While many of the hits were not library-related, the major library resources on Latin America consist of an About page, a page describing the Collections, a guide called "Current Information Sources in Lehman Library: Latin America," a class handout ("Latin American Studies and the Internet"), and a guide to Latin American History (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/libraries/indiv/butlref/split.html).

15. University of Connecticut Libraries, "Resources for Latin American Studies" (http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/subjectareas/lams.htm). This page is one of several pages compiled and written by Darlene Waller, Reference Librarian and Curator of Hispanic History and Culture, at the University of Connecticut Libraries. Her page provides links to several original and useful pages: a Guide to Library Reference Sources, LAS current journals, LAS microform sets, and LAS videotapes (pdf). At this site there is also information about the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and its Archives and Special Collections, including the Hispanic History and Culture Collections page, the Mexican Broadsides Collection page, and the Spanish Periodicals and Newspapers page. On another page, "Resources for Spanish and Portuguese Studies" (http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/subjectareas/span.htm), there are links to major sources as well as a list of current journals at UC. Several in-house research guides are available: Latin American and Caribbean Studies, LAS Microform Serials and Collections, LAS Videotapes, and Latino/Latina Studies. Another unique addition to resources at this site is the online version of an exhibit entitled "Paseo por el Periodismo: A history of Journalism in Latin America and Spain" which is located in Archives and Special Collect(icons section http://www.lib.uconn.edu/Exhibits/Darlene/darfpg.htm). An excellent regional library resource is located at this site, the page devoted to the Latin American Studies Consortium of New England (http://spirit.lib.uconn.edu/consort.htm). It contains information about the four library members' memberships, journal and microform holdings, public services and policies and procedures in the respective member libraries (Brown University., UConn, UMass/Amherst, Yale). A contact page and photo of Darlene are at http://www.ucc.uconn.edu/~hbladm30/.

16. Cornell University, "Latin American Government Documents Project" (http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/ladocshome.html). This project is a very important resource. Developed by David Block, Ibero-American Bibliographer, this set of pages is a creative and singular effort to classify and organize electronic links to LA governmental information resources. It is organized by country and has become spectacularly useful judging by the fact that most other LAS resource pages provide a link to this page. Categories included are Statistical Sources, Executive and Ministerial Documents, National Legislative Documents, National Judicial Documents, Subnational Documents. And, as with other LANE libraries, there are pages of LA newspaper and newsmagazine holdings at Cornell (http://latino.lib.cornell.edu/lanews.html) as well as LA microform holdings (http://latino.lib.cornell.edu/lamicroforms.html), and the Latin American collection policy (http://latino.lib.cornell.edu/cdlatinamerica.html).

17. Dartmouth College Library, "Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Project" (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sorjuana). The Sor Juana project, developed by former Dartmouth bibliographer Luis Villar (now at University of Wisconsin) and sponsored by the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, is an ambitious undertaking designed to provide electronic versions of the complete works and a comprehensive bibliography of this seventeenth century writer and nun: plays, poetry and prose. Also at the Dartmouth College site are collection development policies and collecting intensity statements for Spanish Language and Literature and Portuguese Language and Literature areas. A magnificent online exhibit of Jose Clemente Orozco frescoes, painted in 1932-34 in the Baker Library while Orozco was a visiting lecturer, is located here. The exhibit includes Images of the frescoes, photos, an interpretation and a bibliography (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/Orozco/index.html).

18. Duke University Libraries, International and Area Studies in Perkins Library, "Latin America, Spain and Portugal" (http://www.lib.duke.edu/ias/latamer/index.htm). This page provides links for the Latin American Studies pages at Duke and was compiled by Deborah Jakubs and Hortensia Calvo, Ibero-American Bibliographers and Peter Frykholm, Asst., International and Area Studies Dept. The categories of resources provided at this page are: Description of the Latin American Collection, Duke Library Guides and Information, and Internet Resources (with links to gateways, library collections, international organizations, and book sellers). The Guide and Information section is a substantial compilation of local information and holdings, finding aids and in-depth research guides on many subjects, including the Social Sciences, Literature, and other Specialized Subjects. The "Caribbean Studies" page, developed by Hortensia Calvo, Pamela Graham and Peter Frykholm, contains a list of programs at Duke, guides and resources, and Internet resources (http://www.lib.duke.edu/ias/pmg.html).

19. Dumbarton Oaks (http://www.doaks.org). A library of Harvard University with significant "holdings on the pre-Columbian periods," this site contains pages on Conferences, Pre-Columbian Collection (including a photo of the Pre-Columbian Museum Gallery of photos of the art collection), Fellowships, Publications (dozens of titles are currently offered), and the Library. The Library page describes the library of 20,000 volumes plus articles, journals, microforms, newsletters, magazines and other materials and files, but provides no link to its own catalog, nor links to any other Harvard libraries or catalogs.

20. University of Florida Libraries, "UF Libraries Latin American Collection" (http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/lac/lacf.html). This is a single page document with brief descriptions of the collections (at Smathers, Maps and Special Collections), services and hours.

21. University of Georgia, "Humanities Dept. Subject Resources" (http://www.libs.uga.edu/humanities/humsubrs.html). The General Library site is very attractive in its design with a fine "About the Libraries" page, which serves as a guide to librarians as well as e-resources, services and collections. Gayle Williams, Bibliographer for Latin America, Spain and Portugal, is web editor for the Humanities Dept. Subject Resources section of the site (under the Collection Services section of the "Homepages of Individual Units of the Libraries") and creator of the unique resource, "Latin America Cinema Home Page." The cinema page contains 64 links to information about film, biographical works, filmographies and catalogs, and research institutions, film archives and associations (http://www.libs.uga.edu/humaniti/ltamcine.html).

22. Harvard University Library, "Harvard University Library Resources on Latin America" (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~drclas/library.html). This page briefly describes Harvard's library system and commitment to Latin American collecting, electronic access, and preservation, and offers several links to "Fundamental Resources" for Latin American research.

23. Hoover Institution, "Americas Collection" (http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/LIBRARY/AMERICAS.715/AMIINTR.HTM). The Americas portion of the Hoover Institution website contains four sections: an introduction to the collection, history of the collection, description of the collection and a list of guides to the collection.

24. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, "Latin American Library Services Homepage" (http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~ngonzale/).

25. Indiana University Library, "Latin American Resources" (http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/resource/area-study/latin-amerca.html).

26. University of Kansas Libraries, "Department for Spain, Portugal and Latin America" (http://www.ukans.edu/~splat). Written by Jana Krentz, Ibero-American bibliographer, this site very conventiently is the primary site for LAS resources at KU. It provides brief descriptions of the general LA collection as well as special research collections. It contains links to Collection Development Policies for Spanish Language and Literature, Portuguese Language and Literature, and for Caribbean and Haitian Creole. In addition to links to principal Internet resources, there are links organized by gateways, organizations, journals/newspapers, literature and reference. Original resources include a syllabus for the "Latin American Library Resources" class, a local CD-ROM resources list, and a soon-to-be-released "Bibliographies" page with finding aids on 19 topics (under construction).

27. Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, "Kellogg Information Center" (http://www.nd.edu/~kic). This homepage, written by Iberian and Latin American Studies Librarian Scott Van Jacob, provides information on services, staff and resources available in the Information Center, and also provides links to Latin American related websites, including several original pages of links for current news, scholarly sources, newspapers, magazines, statistics and history. Other LAS-related pages include an subject section on the main library electronic resources page (http://www.nd.edu/~crichter/nd/electres.htm), a >A HREF="http://www.nd.edu/~colldev/latin.html"> "Library Guide to Specialized Sources in Latin American Studies," a finding aid aimed at supporting undergraduate level research (http://www.nd.edu/~colldev/latin.html), a current acquisitions list, a list of working papers received, an online Exhibt about the "McDevitt Collection on the Spanish Inquisition" (http://www.nd.edu/~rarebook/Exbt/Inquisition/), and information about the Corson Family donation of the library of Jose Durand (http://www.nd.edu/~rarebook/Dept/Text/d.html#Durand).

28. Library of Congress, "Hispanic Reading Room,"<'A> (http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/). This website contains resources essential to Latin American studies, including the important electronic indexes and abstracts of "HLAS Online" (Handbook of Latin American Studies) (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas), reviewed in an earlier E-Resources column).

29. University of Miami, Otto G. Richter Library (http://www.library.miami.edu/). The main library site offers links to several Latin American content pages, including informative descriptions of the unique archival and special collections on Cuba. There also are pages/guides to online information, including the "Latin American Resources" page (http://www.library.miami.edu/staff/iez/latin.html), which links to pages on "Caribbean Resources" and "International Resources." The three Library Research Guides at this site are about books, periodicals and Caribbean writers. The staff homepages section contains a welcome from Sara Sanchez and her photo.

30. University of Michigan Library, "Latin American Studies Sources" (http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/rrs/selector/laselect.html). This page, written by Rita Wilson (former UMich Reference Librarian), is a guide to the University of Michigan LA collections and resources, including standard LA reference tools on 19 topics. A prolific webpage developer, Wilson has written a number of other useful pages that are offered from Michigan (although she is currently at University of Texas at San Antonio). Her major pages are: LA Subject Resources, Mexico, Caribbean and Central America, South America, Online Publications from LA, Mexican Newspapers Online, Latin American Embassies/Embassies in LA with Webpages, and Pedro Infante, Mexican Music and Film. Other brief guides at the UMich site are: "Selected Latin American Resources" (now maintained by Bryan Skib, Selector for Latin America, French, Religion), which links primarily to other Wilson pages (http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/rrs/selector/lapage.html), and "Selected Resources in the Romance Languages," developed by Romance Languages Selector Tom Burnett (http://www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/rrs/selector/rlpage.html).

31. Michigan State University Libraries, "Electronic Resources in Latin American & Caribbean Studies" (http://www.lib.msu.edu/dbases/kw/latin_american_&_caribbean_studies.htm)

32. University of Minnesota, University Libraries--Twin Cities, "Iberia and Ibero-American Studies at the University of Minnesota: A Pathfinder" (http://www.lib.umn.edu/area/iberpath.html). Compiled by Rafael Tarrago, Librarian for Iberian, Ibero-American and Chicano Studies, this page and its companion page, Iberia and Ibero-America on the Internet: a Selected List," (http://www.lib.umn.edu/area/iberintr.html) constitute the Latin American finding aids for electronic and other reference information at UMN. The Internet list is categorized by databases, discussion groups, e-journals, Internet sites and newspapers. Each entry has a brief annotation and the contact address or URL.

33. University of New Mexico, General Library, "Iberian Studies and Library Materials at the UNM" (http://www.unm.edu/~libinfo/Libraries/Individual/laiberian.html). This page contains a description of the significant holdings and specialized collections on Latin America and Iberian studies at UNM. A "New Acquisitions List" is at http://www.unm.edu/~libacser. Another page outlines the library catalog access and document delivery programs of the "Ibero-American Science and Technology Education Consortium Library Linkages Program" (http://www.unm.edu/~libinfo/Libraries/Individual/istec.html).

34. New Mexico State University Library, "Internet Resources for Latin America" (http://lib.nmsu.edu/subject/bord/laguia/). Molly Molloy, Latin American Specialist, has compiled and published a tremendous number of e-resources relevant to Latin American Studies. Her guide, "Internet Resources for Latin America" (reviewed in an earlier E-Resources column), is an unequalled contribution as an electronic pathfinder and guide, and is offered as a link on nearly every LA library collection site. Other notable resources at the New Mexico State University Library site (http://lib.nmsu.edu/staff/mmolloy/) include several unique and useful resources: Andanzas al Web Latino (also described in an earlier column), Languages and Linguistics: Library and Internet Resources, Mexico News Archives, Best of Mexico, Border and Latin American Information, Las Cruces Press Women Association, and teaching information (files/sites developed for courses she taught at the NMSU Library, on "Information Literacy," and at the Institute for Technology Assisted Learning, on "Electronic Library Resources for Distance Education," and "Connectivity Issues."

35. New York Public Library, Science, Industry and Business Library, "Worldwide Business Directories: Latin America and the Caribbean" (http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/directories/latincar.htm) and "International Trade Brief: Mexico" (http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/trade/mexicobr.html). These pages are comprised of lists of business directories with some subject and contact points. Two other pages are sponsored by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: "Selected Internet Sources of Information on Africa and the African Diaspora: Caribbean; Central and Latin America. " One is organized by subject, and one by country (http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sources/caribesubjects.html), (http://www.nypl.org/research/sc/sources/caribcountries.html). In addition to the Business and Schomburg sites, Denise Hibay, Librarian, General Research Division, reports that two new sites are under construction. One site will be about the Exhibit on the Spanish-American War, with an accompanying Research Guide (March 1998), and the other will be dedicated to Latin American Resources at NYPL (Sept. 1998).

36. New York University, Bobst Library, "Latin American Studies Resources" (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/soc/lat-am). This page, compiled by Angela Carreno, Bibliographer for LAS, brings together information about Latin American-related Internet sites and about the Bobst Library, including the collection development policy, lists of microform set and video holdings, a SALALM committee-sponsored guide by Carreno and Ramon Abad, "Resources for Locating and Evaluating Latin American Videos," and two in-depth research guides, the "Latin American Studies Research Guide" (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/soc/lat-am/latguid.htm) and the "Spanish and Portuguese Literature Research Guide," (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/hum/ibero/spanguid.htm). Also available at this site is the "Spanish and Portuguese Studies Resources" page (http://www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/hum/ibero/). Carreno's set of Latin American pages serve as convenient locators and guides for Latin American Studies. In addition to these pages, Carreno maintains the General Bobst Library homepage for Current News Sources (including newspapers in all formats), and oversees the development of the Newberry Library, "Edward E. Ayer Collection" and "William B. Greenlee Collection" (http://www.newberry.org/ISC28). This site contains brief descriptions of the unique holdings of the Ayer and Greenlee collections, noted for their holdings in Brazilian and Portuguese history, literature, travel, exploration, discovery, colonization and bibliography.

38. University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Libraries, "History and Area Studies: the Americas" (http://sunsite.unc.edu/reference/vrdhist.html).

39. Ohio State University Libraries, "Latin American Studies Reading Room" (http://www.lib.ohio-state.edu/Lib-Info/LAT.html). This page, written by Edward Anthony Riedinger, Bibliographer for Latin America, Spanish and Portuguese, is an "electronic extension" of the OSU LAS Reading Room and provides sections on Research Aids, News, Libraries, Organizations, Research Projects and New Book lists.

40. University of Pennsylvania, "Areas of the World-Mexico, Central and South America: Latin American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania" <(http://www.library.upenn.edu/resources/area/latin/latin.html). This page, developed by Joseph C. Holub, Ibero-American Bibliographer, contains 43 links to local and remote resources and websites. Unique materials include a "Guide to Latin American Materials at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries," the Collection Development Policy for LAS, Organizations at Penn, and Resources by Subject (which links to dozens of other pages), and Resources by Type (Booksellers, Countries, Databases, Electronic Journals, Government Resources, Guides, Libraries, Maps, News, Organizations and Statistical Sources).

41. University of Pittsburgh, Center for Latin American Studies, "Eduardo Lozano Latin American Collection" (http://www.pitt.edu/~clas/english/library.htm). This page and its linked resources offer in-depth descriptions of library collection strengths (Cuba, Bolivia) and services. There is also a list of newspapers received, a list of 547 Cuban periodicals held in the Library, and an overview of LA Literatures and Languages Materials at Pittsburgh.

42. Princeton University Library, "Doing Research at Princeton: Latin America, Spain and Portugal" literary papers and manuscript collections held in the Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections (http://www.princeton.edu/~ferguson/rbsc/latin.htm).

43. San Diego State University, "Latin America and the U.S. Border Region at the SDSU Library" (http://libweb.sdsu.edu/sub_libs/cpuerto/websites.html) and "Mexican Americans and Latinos on the Internet" (http://libweb.sdsu.edu/sub_libs/cpuerto/www.mex.html).

44. University of Southern California, "Boeckmann Center for Iberian & Latin American Studies," (http://www.usc.edu/Library/Boeck/). Developed in collaboration with Barbara Robinson, Curator, Boeckmann Center, this site contains several sections of useful and/or unique resources under the "More Information" section: Information Services (includes a list of 255 websites on diverse topics); Electronic Resources (includes "Latin American Literary Authors," a fantastic page developed by Ivan Calimano and Jean Luc Estrella with extensive listings of authors organized by country and by LC classification number, http://www-lib.usc.edu/~calimano/bib_control/paises.html); Collections; Specialized Topics (includes "Dia de los Muertos" page http://www-lib.usc.edu/Info/Boeck/special.html). Events, Gifts, Faculty, Related University Resources, and a glossary of computer terms for Latin Americanists. Future developments are to include a Spanish American literary manuscripts page.

45. Stanford University, "Latin American and Iberian Collections" (http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/hasrg/latinam/latamint.html). This multi-layered site, with beautiful "graphics based on anonymous art from 'papel amatl'", contains sections dedicated to General Information (with an introduction to the collections at Green Library and contact names); Specialized Non-Print Collections (lists of microfiche sets, film titles, CD-ROM titles, and videos); Department, Program and Research Center Links; Important Acquisitions in Latin American and Iberian Materials (describes seven special collections of books, papers and videos); Computer-Based Resources (a page of 60 links covering servers, newspapers and journals, national libraries, and bibliographies); and Other Latin American and Iberian Collections (links to 15 LA library and related sites such as SALALM and LAMP).

46. University of Texas at Austin, "Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection," (http://www.utexas.edu/Libs/Benson/benson.html). This website contains a description of this leading Latin American collection, and offers links to sections on Electronic Resources, Selections from the Benson Latin American Collection (including Biblionoticias, 1990-present; finding aids to the archival collections of LULAC, Mexican Archives, and the Collection of Dr. Robert J. Mullen; Online Exhibits such as Border Cultures, Relaciones Geograficas, and the Eleuterio Escobar Collection); and to other Latin America-related sites at UT.

47. Tulane University, "Latin American Library," (http://www.tulane.edu/~latinlib/lalhome.html). This excellent and voluminous site, created and maintained by Reference and Electronic Services Librarian Paul Bary, has several sections highlighting the unique collections and resources of Tulane University: Reference Services and Resources, Treasures of the Collection, Exhibits, Staff, Rare Books, Manuscript Collections, Photographic Archive, and LA Collections in the Southeast [U.S.]. There is a tremendous amount of original information at this site, and a large number of links to valuable research information, guides, lists of resources and bibliographies to support research in Latin American studies.

48. Vanderbilt University Libraries, "Resources for Latin American Studies" (http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/latam.html). This list, compiled by Bibliographer Paula Covington, contains 47 links: to the description of the LA collection and collecting levels, and to sections covering Reference Sources, Country Links, Sites by Subject, Libraries and Archives, Journals/newspapers/magazines, Discussion Lists and Organizations. There are two literature pages, "Resources for Spanish Language and Literature" (http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/span.html) and "Resources for Portuguese Language and Literature" (http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/central/port.html). These pages also have collection descriptions, and links to general as well as specific language, culture and travel sites.

49. University of Virginia, "Dept. of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese," (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/subjects/spanish/spanish.html). This page, maintained by Librarian for Spanish, Italian & Portuguese C. Jared Loewenstein, contains links to University of Virginia library resources as well as links to several major LAS sites. The Special Collections Dept. page links to a description and several digitized manuscript pages from the Jorge Luis Borges Collection (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/speccol/colls/borges/borges.html)

50. University of Wisconsin, "Land Tenure Center Library" (http://www.wisc.edu/ltc/library.html).

51. Yale University, "Yale University Library Research Guide: Latin American Studies," (http://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/latinamerican/). This is the main page for a set of well-developed and detailed LAS pages at Yale, developed by Cesar Rodriguez, Curator of the Latin American Collection. Contained in the guide are links to pages with further finding aids, collection descriptions, indexes to holdings and collections, catalog links and two very useful Internet Resources pages: "Humanities: Languages and literatures: Iberian Languages and Literatures (Peninsular)" (http://www.library.yale.edu/Internet/iberianlanglit.html) and "Humanities: History & Area Studies: Latin American Studies" (http://www.library.yale.edu/Internet/latinamerica.html). Another nice page (for onsite researchers) is the list of available of print versions of the Yale Library Research Guides (http://www.library.yale.edu/humanities/latinamerican/biblio.html).

The above column was originally published in the SALALM Newsletter, vol. 25, no. 5 (April 1998): 119-125.

E-Resources for Latin American Studies
Economic Information

By Rhonda L. Neugebauer

Economic activities drive virtually every aspect of our lives and have powerful repercussions on the world's political, financial, social, cultural and physical organization. Through the economy, the world's resources are apportioned, administered, and utilized according to prevailing political and economic doctrine, with seemingly little regard for equity or need. The economies of Latin America were integrated into the world economy with the role of providing raw materials and agricultural products for growing overseas markets. This particular process of integration influenced the development of the political systems and socio-economic structures in each country and, in the region, produced a historical legacy of underdevelopment, poverty, and political instability.

In the last two decades, a new approach to world economic growth has prevailed to result in more changes to the Latin American economic landscape. In the wake of the 1980s debt crisis, neo-liberalism rapidly gained ground as the predominant solution for Latin America's economic problems. Its proponents argued for increasing integration of markets, labor and capital, and instituted political agendas to expand free trade agreements with industrial nations. Those agreements sought to reduce protectionism and government intervention in the region's economies and to re-focus the countries of Latin America on the needs of the world market. These changes have had enormous impacts on Latin American business, trade, financing, investments, productive capacity and development options. And, the resulting structural adjustment programs imposed by international financing agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have effected large numbers of people, some of whom are the least involved in economic decision-making and who have endured the most hardship.

The Internet has improved access to documentation and analysis of the economic activities of the world. In this column, I provide reviews of several noteworthy Internet resources that facilitate and influence the study of current Latin American economic and social conditions. Several of the agencies listed in this column-World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank-are major providers of statistical data and economic analyses of the region. They are also involved with promoting and implementing the structural adjustment programs of Latin America's economies. Recently, these agencies have developed encyclopedic websites with an immense amount of information, including statistical data, research and working papers, publications, online catalogs of library holdings, and collections of research documents. In addition to collecting and distributing massive amounts of statistical data on each Latin American country, the agencies have begun to use their websites, albeit unevenly, to promote their documentation, research and publishing efforts.

Scholarly accounts regularly utilize information that has been collected, compiled and/or published by these agencies. And, since research sponsored by such agencies frequently contains important primary data for analysis of the region or country and the economic and social conditions, the papers and documents produced by researchers at these agencies can enable and/or effect further analysis of the situation. Moreover (and of vital interest to Latin Americans), the information collected and published by these agencies is used to make critical decisions about whether to finance infrastructure projects, industrial growth, economic reforms, or other developments, which in turn may have their own impact on the economic environment of the country.

By mounting statistical and other data on the Internet, the information is made available much sooner and to more distant audiences. Indeed, the web has provided a useful forum for the intersection of readily-available current information with the new technology that enables its ready, quick and profuse distribution. Thus, there is increased information flow not only to and from the decision-making agencies and world economic actors (banks, companies, trade partners), but the information also flows more readily to and within the academic discipline of economics.

There are several interconnected and prodigious websites that seek to organize the intellectual and informational infrastructure of the field of economics. Included in this column are reviews of several impressive acquisition and access efforts by academics in the discipline of economics and international business. Their efforts to organize and offer access to research and other papers needed for academic analysis of the economies in Latin America are impressive administrative efforts that have greatly improved the intellectual and informational infrastructure of the field.

In the first eight reviews, I describe the collaborative efforts of several of these projects. The sites hosted by NetEc, RePEc, IDEAS, and EconWPA form the core of a coordinated effort to provide bibliographic control, on-demand availability, and easy access to the type of material known as working papers or research papers published by funding agencies, universities, banking institutions, academic departments and faculty members. Their respective data sets of papers and metadata (data about the papers) contain thousands of working and research papers, journal articles and software components, and bring together the resources of several important players in the field of Latin American economic development. Some of the working papers have never been published in print format; others are publications of organizations and agencies that have been contributed to the archive in order to facilitate wider distribution. The field of economics has long utilized working papers as an established method of documenting current research findings (often before formal publication), yet the dissemination of these documents is commonly limited, making acquisition by libraries problematic, and making systematic study of these documents difficult. The Internet access and archiving provides many administrative functions to support scholarly research, including a central repository, bibliographic control, database maintenance, searching and retrieval (of local as well as remote information); and these functions virtually eliminate many of the problems of distribution.

In my search for relevant economics information on the Internet, I was especially impressed with the elaborate online projects directed by some very creative academicians in the field of economics. The NetEc group sites, especially, were built with the intention of shifting the focus of publishing from journals to the scholarly world itself. Scholars are encouraged to utilize the Internet as a tool to promote this shift and, in effect, to become publishers and/or distributors. They envision making certain types of research free, accessible, and competitive with the other actors on the field, namely journal publishers and other providers of information. While these academicians are working to improve the pace of academic interchange and exchange among scholars, they also have impacted the exchange itself, the routing process and the distribution process.

The NetEc group and other affiliated projects that work to create and maintain working papers archives offer exemplary models of collaboration among academics, professional associations, educational institutions, multi-lateral organizations and dedicated individuals. By working together to provide bibliographic access, organization, cataloging and/or delivery of hard-to-locate publications and many unpublished works and by involving major information providers such as the World Bank and Federal Reserve in their efforts, they have influenced information flow within their discipline and ensured wider access to and utilization of these documents.

1. NetEc (http://netec.wustl.edu/NetEc.html). NetEc, started in 1993 by a group of technologically savvy academic economists, coordinated by Thomas Krichel at the University of Surrey,UK. It is an umbrella group for several ambitious international collecting and access projects that offer free access to economics information on the Internet through its affiliated websites (BibEc, WoPEc, CodEc, WebEc, HoPEc and JokEc). Through these projects, NetEc delivers a tremendous amount of economics information into the non-commercial domain, and organizes it for easy searching, archiving and sharing. The websites can be searched globally or separately. There is a significant amount of material on Latin America at the sites sponsored by NetEc. My search on the term Latin America resulted in 120 hits, representing dozens of contributed papers and journal articles. The welcome page lists the scope of the various projects and describes NetEc as "an international effort to improve the communication of Economics information via electronic media." In fact, NetEc's various projects provide free access, innovative bibliographic control, and efficient searching of thousands of research reports, working papers, software, articles, and other documents relevant to the discipline of economics. A major goal of the project has been "to improve the scholarly communication in Economics via electronic media," which it has no doubt accomplished. It has very high use statistics, has forged creative relationships with major information providers of economics information (some of them being "the world's leading working paper publishers"), and has vowed to work "towards a future with exchange of academic ideas between those who generate them, rather than through commercial publishers." In sum, the activist efforts of NetEc illustrate innovative collaboration between researchers and information providers using new Internet technology. The sections of NetEc are listed here and several are described more fully later in this column: BibEc is a collection of bibliographic information about printed working papers; WoPEc is an archive of electronic working papers and/or links to working papers; CodEc contains codes for economics and econometrics; WebEc is a compilation of web based resources for economists, with especially good coverage of journals; HoPEc is a site that links to personal home pages with economics papers; and JokEc is a list of jokes about economics and economists. Two additional projects sponsored by NetEc are Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) and New Economic Papers (NEP), both of which are described below. Also mentioned on the welcome page and affiliated with NetEc, are the excellent searchable websites, "Resources for Economists on the Internet," by William L. Goffe (also described below), and "Economics Departments, Institutes and Research Centres in the World," a list of compiled by Christian Zimmermann. [Site viewed Sept. 9, 1998]

2. RePEc, Research Papers in Economics (http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/RePEc/). Maintained by Thomas Krichel (University of Surrey, UK), RePEc is sponsored by NetEc and brings together a diverse group of individuals and organizations working to coordinate the archiving, access to and delivery of the electronic research and working papers of its contributing organizations. It contains economics research documents (working papers, journal articles) and data about those documents (metadata). Many organizations with prolific publishing programs contribute archives or sets of documents, including many universities and economics departments, the National Bureau of Economic Research (Cambridge, Mass.), the U.S. Federal Reserve, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research (London). Given that some of these organizations publish a large amount of research on Latin America, the data organized by RePEc has significant research potential for a wide range of Latin American economic issues (including banking, finance, statistical information and analysis). RePEc functions as a repository for the papers of the numerous contributing entities, and now includes over 7,000 papers in electronic format and over 60,000 papers in printed form. Although working papers have been its primary concern, other types of publications are also listed (series publications, articles, software components, and books). The definition of "working paper" or "research paper" utilized by most of the affiliated archives is defined by RePEc as "documents that are either printed or available on the Internet as electronic files that are suitable for printing." Underlying this definition is the assumption that "papers" (whether electronic or printed documents) will continue to serve as a "predominant vehicle for research communication for a long time, despite all the hypermedia hype." While RePEc functions to collect and organize entire archive sets, it has no user interface. It can be searched, however, through its affiliated service providers (BibEc, WoPEc, IDEAS, and NEP). The RePEc group invites all parties interested in distributing free data through the Internet to join its efforts. Not all papers that are included here, however, are free. Because RePEc concepts (organization, archiving, etc.) can be extended to a variety of data collections on research papers, there are help files, templates, archive identifiers, step-by-step guides to building an archive, and installation instructions available at this site for those interested in setting up similar archives for working paper datasets. There are mirror sites in the US (http://netec.wustl.edu/RePEc/) [the Washington University site was not accessible on Sept. 14] and Japan. [Site viewed August 31, 1998]

3. NEP, New Economics Papers (http://netec.wustl.edu/NEP) NEP is a free current awareness e-mail service sponsored by the RePEc group. It distributes edited reports about additions to the RePEc archive via 26 subject-specific e-mail lists. Subscription instructions are at the address above (the lists are not for discussion). [Site viewed Sept. 6, 1998]

4. IDEAS, Internet Documents in Economics Access Service (http://ideas.uqam.ca/). IDEAS is an end user search service that uses the Excite search engine to search the bibliographic information of the archives affiliated with the RePEc project (over 60,000 working papers, 8000 articles, 177 software components, and 820 series, with 8579 downloadable files). It was established in Sept. 1997 and is maintained by Christian Zimmermann at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. IDEAS searches the combined database of all the electronic and hard-copy working paper titles and abstracts that are coordinated through RePEc (including BibEc, WoPEc, Fed in Print, NBER, and CEPR); and by arrangement with EconWPA, IDEAS also searches the bibliographic information of papers in EconWPA. This is THE place to search the series of various sites sponsored by NetEc. [Site viewed Sept. 7, 1998]

5. BibEc, Printed Papers in Economics (http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/BibEc.html). This service, also part of NetEc, is operated by Fethy Mill, Universite de Montreal, and provides information on print copies of working papers. The bibliographic information of these same papers is included in the RePEc archives, which can be searched to identify papers on topics of interest. The owners of this site are working to add ordering information for these papers. BibEc's sister project is WoPEc, a database of electronic format papers that can be downloaded (some have fees). [Site viewed Sept. 7, 1998]

6. WoPEc, Electronic Working Papers in Economics (http://netec.wustl.edu/WoPEc.html). WoPEc, managed by Jose Manuel Barrueco Cruz and moderated by Thomas Krichel, began in early 1993 as an effort to collect bibliographic information about online working papers, but soon shifted its efforts to collecting information about the "electronic manifestations" of remote working papers and creating a mechanism for searching and linking to them. Searching can be done within the database or through IDEAS. The database contains over 8000 papers and hundreds of journal articles, and continues to develop as an important archive. My search retrieved 40 hits on Latin America, 3 on El Salvador, and 22 on Argentina with many documents originating from the World Bank. Involving the growing number of departmental and institutional online archives of working papers (over 200 in 1997, according to Krichel) in this innovative and decentralized method of publishing and distributing papers, is a primary focus of WoPEc's undaunted creators as they continue their struggle to offer their own version of an alternative publishing mechanism for the current journal system. [Site viewed Sept. 7, 1998]

7. WebEc-World Wide Web Resources in Economics (http://www.helsinki.fi/WebEc/). WebEc, part of NetEc, is maintained by Lauri Saarinen of the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration and updated quarterly. This site provides broad, comprehensive coverage of economics including general resources as well as web resources. The main page is organized into thirty categories with dozens of subcategories. Each subcategory has its own page of links that further break down the topic. There is some coverage of Latin America, primarily within the international section. The news section identified two important Latin American economics newspapers (Primer Impacto and Gazeta Mercantil On-line), and the international economics sections includes several headings that contain links to organizations and other sites that include information on Latin American international trade, business, finance, development, organizations and treaties. An important part of this site is its extensive listings of print and online journals, with links to a few journals about Latin America and links to many more general journals with coverage of Latin American topics. The list is at "Economic Journals on the Internet" (http://www.helsinki.fi/WebEc/journals.html). [Site viewed Sept. 10, 1998]

8. EconWPA (http://econwpa.wustl.edu/). EconWPA is primarily managed by Bob Parks, Economics Dept. faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis with assistance from Larry Blume, Cornell University. This electronic archive of economics working papers is the largest collection of such papers, is organized by 22 subjects, and is searchable by subject, abstract text, author, title or contents. This site, begun in June 1993 and modeled after a fully automated archives in physics for TeX documents (http://xxx.lanl.gov ), allows users to submit their own papers in TeX, PDF and/or Postscript format. My search on Latin America identified several papers unique to this database, but some search results sets contained duplicate hits, even when different country names were searched. The results were: 35 hits on the term Latin America, 27 on Argentina, 45 on Mexico and 16 on El Salvador. EconWPA has close working relations with other working papers archives projects, including NetEc and IDEAS. Information on papers collected in EconWPA is automatically included in WoPEc and in RePEc, and therefore is searchable through IDEAS. The Excite search engine at the site can exclusively search the locally-held working papers at EconWPA. And, on a separate page (http://wueconb.wustl.edu/verity.html), there is search engine that will search the contents of the papers (not just the bibliographic information, as with IDEAS). The site owner reports that he has plans to extend this improved search strategy to other online papers. Site owners encourage individual submission of papers through the automated services via e-mail or a web form. [Site viewed Sept. 10, 1998]

9. Resources for Economists on the Internet, RFE, (http://rfe.org/ or http://econwpa.wustl.edu/EconFAQ/EconFAQ.html). This well-designed, topically organized, expansive guide (complete with ISSN) was compiled and written by Bill Goffe, Associate Professor of Economics and International Business at the University of Southern Mississippi. Its purpose is to organize and describe Internet resources for economists, academics and others with an interest in economics. Developed over the last five years, this guide is a remarkable resource with extensive coverage of economic information on the Internet with links to several dozen important international websites and resources that cover Latin America. The site lists over 700 resources, including a dozen specifically on Latin America, and provides descriptions for most of the resources as well as links to the remote sites mentioned. Most of the coverage of Latin America is found in the links to sites with broad coverage of international business, trade, and finance, such as the IMF, World Bank, IADB, and others. The site is easy to navigate, and has a title/main page with broad subject headings that link to different sections of the site. There is also a comprehensive table of contents page with headings that link to subcategories and reviews of the resources listed. Very valuable features of the site are the reviews and/or descriptions of Internet resources linked to the RFE site. Goffe's insightful explanations of these resources showcase his personal familiarity and involvement with many websites developed to organize, present and deliver electronic economic information via the Internet. The entire site is searchable with Excite. The use statistics provide some indication of how popular this site has become with the main page counter noting 106,074 visitors since April 16, 1998. Clearly, this site has been recognized as a substantial and beneficial contribution to the organization of economic information on the web. There are several mirror sites (UK, Australia, Japan). The site even offers bookmark files for downloading, making the links within this site easy to organize on a desktop computer. Bill Goffe reports that he recently received support from the American Economic Association and plans expansion of this site in a several of key areas. This site is worth using and linking to for broad, extensive coverage of economics issues. [Site viewed Aug. 31, 1998]

10. International Monetary Fund (http://www.imf.org/). There is a wide variety of information about Latin America at this well-organized and eminently searchable site. The main page links to eight major sections: About the IMF, News Releases, IMF Publications, Fund Rates, Data Standards, Index, Map and Featured Topics (meetings, comments, information about IMF positions on a variety of topics). The IMF Publications page contains a sophisticated search feature, capable of browsing and/or searching the publications database by author and title, subject, date, language and series. The database contains numerous publications and reports in full-text that are valuable to the study of Latin America, including the IMF Publications Available in Full Text (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/fulltext.cfm); IMF Working Papers in Full Text (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/CAT/wp.cfm) and IMF Staff Country Reports in Full Text (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/CAT/scr.cfm). [Viewed Sept. 14, 1998]

11. World Bank Group (http://www.worldbank.org/). This site contains a large amount of key economic and financial information on Latin America, including World Bank project documents, regional operations, country studies, research reports, journals, and other publications. Some of the most important sections of the site, however, are hidden under layers of links, and are not obvious when viewing the first page. This may be because the site presents such a large amount of information, has a complicated layout, and has been developed by distinct entities within the organization. The main page provides access to the activities of the World Bank Group and the five organizations that comprise it: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (all of these organizations have their own websites, linked to the main WB homepage). Other links on the main page include News, Publications, Topics in Development, Countries and Regions, Doing Business with the Bank, and About the World Bank. In addition, there are several "Special Interest" sections linked to the main homepage: 1998 Annual Meetings, the Year 2000 Problem, World Development Indicators, and World Bank Partnerships. The site is searchable with Excite. However, some searches produced hits on irrelevant documents and several website and navigational links were not active. The link to the Countries and Regional page contains a section, "Latin America and the Caribbean," with links to many resources, including a "Regional Brief" on LA, information on conferences and meetings, pertinent portions of the WB Annual Report, press information and speeches, an Environmental Overview, Poverty Assessments by Country, Publications (including the Catalogue, Project Documents and Assessments) and links to IFC Activities in Latin America and the Caribbean and to the Caribbean Group for Cooperation in Economic Development. Other very useful resources containing information on Latin America are found under Publications. The Periodicals heading links to a searchable list of World Bank Periodicals (http://www.worldbank.org/html/extdr/journals.htm). The Publications Catalog links to a page of "Other Resources;" this is where the World Development Series is found. Extraordinarily useful, the WDS contains the full text and images of over 6000 operational reports (produced since 1994), including Staff Appraisal Reports, Economic and Sector Work, Evaluation Reports and Studies and GEF & Montreal Protocol Project Documents (http://www-wds.worldbank.org/). The International Trade Division's Policy Research Working Papers are found here (http://www.worldbank.org/html/iecit/archive.html), and are not available from other World Bank sources. Finally, a useful related site contains the IBRD's Social Indicators of Development dataset, allowing interactive queries of the World Bank's dataset, which is comprised of 125 socioeconomic variables from more than 170 economies for the period 1965-1993 (http://www.ciesin.org/lw-kmn/guides/sid.html). In all, this site has the capacity to generate a myriad of Latin American related information and documents on a variety of economic topics. [Sites viewed Sept. 13, 1998]

12. Joint Bank-Fund Library Network (http://jolis.worldbankimflib.org/external.htm). This is the official public website of the World Bank and IMF Libraries Online, a network of 14 libraries that "provide information services and resources to World Bank and IMF staff." The Joint Libraries Information System (JOLIS) Library Catalog contains materials from all the network libraries and uses SIRSI software (Unicorn) for searching. The catalog contains records for books, journal titles, journal articles, working papers, conference proceedings, technical reports, videos, software, and is hyperlinked to electronic resources. The holdings are extensive in the areas of economics, development, trade, public policy, government statistics, international and government finance, and economic conditions of the countries of the world; they also reflect the very active fifty year history of collecting from every member country of the World Bank and IMF (in 35 languages). The Joint Library has over 250,000 volumes, 6700 serial titles, more than 800 research working paper series, microforms and information in electronic format. Search results can be e-mailed to remote locations and several of the member Network Libraries participate in ILL. [Site viewed Sept. 14, 1998]

13. Federal Reserve Banks (http://www.federalreserve.gov/). This site provides links to the 12 Federal Reserve Banks site and some branches as well as to the Board of Governors site. The Federal Reserve sites provide a variety of economic data, statistics, publications and other information primarily about the federal reserve banking system, community development, industry and business, and economic education resources. While the focus of these sites is U.S. banking, some of the Federal Reserve branches provide easily accessible information about Latin America through search forms at the homepage. My searches identified a fair number of hits (primarily articles and abstracts) on Latin American banking and economic information. For example, a search engine at the Atlanta Bank's Miami Branch identified 27 files on Latin America, 33 files on Mexico, 7 files on Argentina and 26 on Brazil. Surprisingly, I could find no mention of the fact that dozens of national and regional Federal Reserve Bank publications (journal articles, series, and research papers) are available through the Resources for Papers in Economics (RePEc) dataset, searchable through IDEAS. [Site viewed Aug. 24, 1998]