Críticas Magazine

Loida García-Febo

Electronic resources going multicultural
February 11, 2008

The wait is over. A multicultural database has arrived. For years librarians serving multiethnic populations, including Latinos and the Spanish speaking have met with publishers to request electronic resources to meet the needs of our customers and to provide information about the Hispanics to our communities at large. At last publishers have been willing to comply. The good news is that Greenwood’s The Latino American Experience is part of a series titled American Mosaic seeking to provide information about the various ethnic groups coexisting in the United States. I see these resources as powerful tools to share characteristics of the multicultural population of our ever increasingly diverse country. As a member of the Advisory Board of the Latino database I can’t hide how proud I am of being part of such a groundbreaking effort to share aspects of Latino life and language.

Greenwood's Latino American Experience database, launched in March 2007, is the “first full-text digital resource to focus on the history and culture of Latinos living in the United States,” said Lisa Pierce, Editorial Database Manager for Greenwood. It includes multivolume reference works and encyclopedias, primary documents, biographies of figures from diverse fields, commissioned articles about latest and hottest issues, scholarly works and monographs. “Its 150 inaugural titles offer avenues of discovery for novice researchers and seasoned scholars alike. LAE includes a 100-plus page Timeline, a cache of primary and Spanish-language documents, and lesson plans, all developed under the guidance of noted scholar and author Ilan Stavans and a team of Latino librarians.  In addition, researchers and library customers alike will be able to find out more about the origins of U.S. Latinos, from the Iberian Peninsula and Indigenous Civilizations of the Americas to the latest artistic, social and political developments in Latin America and the Caribbean,” added Pierce.

In a country with an increasingly diversity in ethnic, racial, religious, and political ways, “The Latino American Experience is an extraordinary opportunity to bring a wealth of knowledge about Hispanics in the US to as ample a public as possible. It's our duty to publicize the effort so that as many people as possible take advantage of it,” rightfully has said Ian Stavans, professor of Latin American and Latino Cultures at Amherst College. The database will be updated twice per year. More information about the database is available at http://www.greenwood.com/mosaic/lae/  While you are checking out the database, read their blog!

American Mosaic also features The African American Experience and very soon will add The American Indian Experience to the series.

Posted by Loida García-Febo on February 11, 2008 | Comments (1)