AFAS 345 - Caribbean Politics
Country Profiles
CIA World Factbook
From the US Central Intelligence Agency. Use the pulldown menus to find brief entries and maps of the countries of the Carribean.
Library of Congress: Country Studies
The Library of Congress publishes the Country Studies Series. Each country study presents "a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions" of the country in question. Use the pulldown menu on the right side of the page under "Choose a Country Study" to select in-depth country studies for the nations of the Caribbean, or click on "Choose a Country Profile" for condensed, brief descriptions of the countries.
Sheppard Software geography games on the Web: the Caribbean
If you're a little uncertain of the geography of the Caribbean, you might want to take a look at Sheppard Software's excellent interactive geography games.
History of the Caribbean, 1960s-1990: Resources
Historical Abstracts
A selective bibliography of the world's historical literature (journal articles, books, dissertations) excluding U.S. and Canadian history. Covers the historical period from 1450 to present. A guide on how to use this database is available here.
HAPI - Hispanic American Periodicals Index
Citations to articles about US-Hispanic and Latin American topics, including Haiti. Articles may be in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish from more than 500 scholarly journals worldwide. Do a combined subject and keyword search, using the name of a selected Caribbean country as your subject and a keyword from your area of research, or use the thesaurus to find specific subject headings. You can also find the thesaurus by clicking on the "About HAPI" link on HAPI's front page.
Contemporary Caribbean Politics
Political Science Abstracts
Abstracts of materials from professional journals, major news magazine and books devoted to North American and international politics and political analysis. Topics include political institutions, processes, and behavior international law and politics public policy public administration political theory and political economics.
PAIS - Public Affairs Information Service
Citations and abstracts to articles in business and the social sciences. Emphasis on international coverage of public policy, government, international relations and current economic, political and social thought.
Political Database of the Americas
From PDBA's "About this database" page: "Through its website, the PDBA offers centralized and systematized information about institutions and political processes, national constitutions, branches of government, elections, political constitutional studies and other subjects related to the strengthening of democracy in the region."
LANIC - Latin American Network Information Center
LANIC is the premier database for all things Latin American: politics, economics, development, and so forth. Click on "Countries" for the official government pages of individual Caribbean countries, or "Regional Resources" for links to intergovernmental/nongovernmental organizations serving the Caribbean.
Economic Development and the Caribbean
ECLAC - Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean
From the webpage: ECLAC was "founded for the purposes of contributing to the economic development of Latin America, coordinating actions directed towards this end, and reinforcing economic relationships among the countries and with the other nations of the world. The promotion of the region's social development was later included among its primary objectives."
ABI/Inform
Citations and abstracts of articles in over 1000 academic journals, magazines, and newspapers, of which over half are full-text. Broad subject coverage of business, trade and development. Try a search for the name of your country and your topic. For example: "Jamaica and development," or "Cuba and banking."
EconLit
Citations and abstracts to articles from over 500 economics journals and articles from books and dissertations on basic economics and economic aspects of history, health, education, policy, and agriculture, as well as accounting and monetary policy.
Inter-American Development Bank
From the web page: "The
IADB is the oldest and largest regional development bank. It is the main source of multilateral financing for economic, social and institutional development projects as well as trade and regional integration programs in Latin America and the Caribbean." Try a search for the name of your country and your topic.
LANIC - Latin American Network Information Center
Click on "Sustaninable Development" for links to sites on development, agriculture, environment-friendly economic growth initiatives, and so forth.
News of the Caribbean
The New York Times on the Internet and the Historical New York Times (available from the UA Libraries
The free, online version of the New York Times has excellent news coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean. To find articles on the Caribbean, click on "World" in the menu on the left side of the page, then "Americas" (under "World" in the upper left corner of the page).
The free, online NYT allows free retrieval of articles up to a week after publication. For anything older, try the Historical New York Times.
Latin American Newsstand
Latin American Newsstand offers the full text of articles in 37 major Latin American newspapers and major international newswires covering Latin America like BBC Monitoring and Notas Financieras. Users will get the entire, cover-to-cover text of the newspapers rather than a selection of articles. For news of the Caribbean, check out El Nuevo Dia of San Juan, Puerto Rico, or InfoAmericas from Miami.
Access World News
Full-text content of local and regional newspapers. Click on "North America," then "Caribbean" for a list of newspapers and newswires covering news in the Caribbean.
Ethnic NewsWatch
An interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and Spanish) and comprehensive full text database of newspapers, magazines and journals from ethnic, minority and native presses. Do a citation and document search for the name of a Caribbean country, or a combined citation and document search for the name of the country and the issue being investigated. While Ethnic NewsWatch covers the newspapers of the minority communities in the United States, those newspapers often have better coverage of overseas issues than do mainstream American newspapers.
Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe
General and international news. To search newspapers and newswires in the Caribbean, use the pulldown menu marked "Select a news category" and choose "World News." Then use the second pulldown menu marked "Please select from list below" and choose "North/South America news sources." Try basic keyword searches for the name of the country you're investigating and a couple of additional subject terms.
Selected Topics in Caribbean Politics and Society
Health
Health Reference Center
Encyclopedia and dictionary entries, pamphlets, reference resources and journal articles from scholarly/academic and popular magazines on health, nutrition, disease, and medicine around the world.
Tourism
Business Source Complete
A database of articles from business journals, magazines and newspapers. Also includes industry and company reports. To find articles on tourism, try an advanced search for "tourism" and the name of the country you're researching, or try "tourism" and "caribbean."
TableBase
TableBase provides tabular and statistical data about companies, industries, products, markets, and consumer behavior for all areas of the world, including the Caribbean. Try a search for "caribbean and tourism," or a search by country.
Gender issues
UA Libraries' Women's Studies Subject Guide
Lists of encyclopedias and dictionaries on women's studies and women's issues, links to websites about women and women's studies, and lots of useful information on women in the United States and overseas. Includes links to the UA Libraries' databases on gender studies;
Gender Studies Database
and GenderWatch are particularly recommended.
PopLine
Provides worldwide coverage of population, family planning, and related health issues, including family planning technology and programs, fertility, and population law and policy from journal articles, monographs, technical reports, and unpublished works. The database includes abstracts; it is NOT a full-text database. Check the library's catalog to see if we own the resource in question. Click on "browse index" to do a subject search.
Race and ethnicity
Ethnic NewsWatch
(see description above)
Sociological Abstracts
Citations and abstracts to articles from an international collection of journal titles as well as abstracts to dissertations, and conference proceedings. Subject focus includes sociology, family studies, gerontology, sociolinguistics and related fields. Try keyword searches for "(name of country) and race", or use "ethnic" or "ethnicity" instead of "race".
Research and Reference Assistance
Citation style manual and tutorial
Here you'll find guides for citing information in the most commonly used formats: American Psychological Association style, Modern Languages Association style, and Chicago Manual of Style format.
Avoiding plagiarism
Plagiarism and academic dishonesty are serious offenses at the University of Arizona. If you are caught plagiarising or committing other acts prohibited by the UA Code of Conduct, the consequences may range from a failing grade for the assignment, to a failing grade for the course, to outright expulsion from the University. Consult the UA Libraries' page on avoiding plagiarism (linked above) for more information, and for tips on avoiding plagiarism.
Web page created by Olivia Olivares, Librarian, Social Sciences Team
Web page created
August 22, 2005