Skip to Main Content

Latin American History

Getting Started -- Latin American History

If you are new to conducting research:
Consider reviewing the Starting Your Research tutorial to learn the phases and processes of doing research

Start your research in Latin American History with these key resources:

Types of History Research: Primary VS. Secondary

Your professor may require you to find scholarly sources  popular sources, secondary sources or primary sources on your topic. Here's a very basic guide if you need more details:

Primary Sources: Primary sources are the raw stuff of history. Examples of primary sources:

  • diaries and journals
  • documents,
  • newspaper or magazine articles,
  • statistics,
  • novels, plays, or poetry
  • reports, autobiographies, memoirs, or books written during the time of an event

Some Primary Sources are also known as popular sources.

Secondary or Scholarly Sources: 
These are the peer reviewed articles and scholarly books that historians write after they have worked with the primary sources -- and consulted other secondary articles or books. 

Historiography: Historiography is the study of how historians have interpreted historical events throughout time. The student of the historiography of\ the Cuban Revolution , for example, might want to compare how this event  was seen by historians in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, thirty years.  One way of doing this comparative interpretation, is by looking for bibliographies on a subject or using the keyword "historiography" combined with keywords from the subject of your research (such as "revolution" in our Library Search or an scholarly database such as Historical Abstracts , HAPI (Hispanic American Periodicals Index), or The Handbook of Latin American Studies.

Other Useful Guides

Arts and Humanities Librarian

Profile Photo
Adam Rosenkranz
Contact:
Research, Teaching, & User Services - The Claremont Colleges Library
909 607-3986
Website