Melissa Gasparotto Latin America, Spanish & Portuguese, and Africa Librarian gasparom@rci.rutgers.edu Created by Lourdes Vazquez May 23, 2007

Research Resources: Subject Research Guides: Latin American Studies:
Collection Scope

The Latin American collection ranges from the discovery and exploration period to present. The Library collects materials published in or about Latin America across many disciplines. Major emphases include the European discovery and the colonial period as well as the 19th and 20th centuries. Collections tend to emphasize Mexico, the Caribbean, Brazil, and the South Cone. Its subject strengths includes literature, history, gender, cinema, arquitecture, theater, African Diaspora religions, Latinos in the USA, economic development, political science, urban planning, sociology, labor, left-wing groups, popular groups, cultural studies, history of the book and anthropology. Materials are acquired in English, Spanish, Portuguese and other European languages as well as indigenous Latin American languages. Its holdings include the records of Yznaga del Valle & Co (Cuba) from 1850 to 1880. It consists of accounts and receipts (1850-1979), letters received (1856-1860), and family papers (1858-1878); the Robert Alexander Papers, trong for its unique large numbers of primary documents and gray literature, and the Frances R. Grant papers. Primarily based on the pamphlet collection of these two collections, a database of Latin American Pamphlets is being developed. This database will also include items from the  ephemera  and  grey  literature collections of University of Florida Harry Kantor, and Rutgers faculty  members  Remigio  U.  Pane, Samuel Bailey, and Tomas Eloy Martínez.

The Spanish & Portuguese Collections include resources related to the societies (histories, cultures and languages) of the Iberian Peninsula and those areas where Portugal ruled such as: Angola and Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe or Lusophone Literature. Its subject strengths encompass the linguistic and literary aspects of Spanish & Portuguese languages such as Romance philology, grammar, phonetics, morphology, syntax, rhetoric, style, composition and lexicography. An area of established collection development is the fiction and drama collection from Spain specially the Siglo de Oro, La Generación del Noventa y Ocho and La Generación del 27. Of special importance is the Spanish medieval studies collection, the Africa in Spain collection, history of the language and the history of the book collection. In recent years there have been an expansion of the Lusophone literature collection. We have a small collection of rare books related to Latin America, Spain and Portugal Spain in the Special Collections and Archives Library. We collect in Spanish, Portuguese, and English languages extensively. We collect in Catalan, Basque and Galician languages selectively.

Cooperative Arrangements: Rutgers University Libraries (RUL) is a member of the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project a cooperative initiative of North American, Latin American, and Caribbean libraries that seek to improve access to the array of research resources published in Latin America. RUL is also a member of the Latin American Northeast Consortium. RUL membership in the Latin American Microform Project (LAMP) and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) allows readers access to microforms of retrospective and hard-to-obtain journals, newspapers, and other research materials, which may be borrowed for use at RU Libraries through interlibrary loan. You may want to consult the guides to the Latin American collection at: http://www.crl.edu/areastudies/LAMP/collections/lampguide.htm