The databases in this page provide the citation, abstract, and in some cases, the full text of journal and magazine articles, books, and dissertations. They are sorted by order of prominence and then alphabetically.
Use only articles from scholarly journals for literature reviews, not those from newspapers or magazines or technical reports.
The following databases have journal articles that focus on Latin America and the Hispanic population. Many of the journals are from Latin America. Unless listed as a "free resource," all the databases are restricted to 
.
American University users can obtain a copy of almost every published article or book in these databases.
For AU Library databases, if the full-text article is not available, click on the 
button. Or use the Interlibrary Loan form. The article can be obtained through the Consortium Loan Service (2 business days) or Interlibrary Loan (longer than 2 days).
Use these databases if a comprehensive search is needed. They are not a good place to start one's research.
Boolean operators:
AND - use to narrow a search and get fewer and more relevant results.
elections and voters
OR - use to broaden a search and get more results. Good for synonyms and words with variant spellings. Add parentheses when using OR.
(latin america or argentina or colombia)
(organization or organisation)
NOT - use to narrow a search to get more relevant results
mexico not new mexico
Truncation:
Use to find words with different word endings.
e.g. immigrant* yields immigrant, immigrants
e.g. immigra* yields immigrant, immigrants, immigrate, immigration, immigrating, etc.
Truncation (or wildcard) symbols:
• Most databases use an asterisk (*).
• LexisNexis uses an exclamation mark (!).
• AU Library catalog and World News Connection use a question mark (?).
• iPolls & RoperExpress use a percentage sign (%).
• Ovid databases use dollar sign ($).
Proximity search:
Use to find words that are close to each other on a page.
It is one way to find more relevant results.
Each family of databases has its own command words.
EBSCO:
nnumber=words near another word in any order, within a certain number
fundamental* n3 islam*
Factiva:
same=words in same paragraph
sex trafficking same ngo*
nearnumber=words near another word in any order, within a certain number
president* near3 speech
HeinOnline
~number=words near each other in any order, within a certain number
"watershed planning"~10
LexisNexis:
w/number=words within a specified number of words, in any order
human rights w/2 violations
w/s=words within the same sentence
crime w/s (dc or district of columbia)
w/p=words within the same paragraph
gays w/p military
ProQuest:
near/number=words near another word in any order, within a certain number
renewable energy near/5 viable
Scopus
w/number=words near another word in any order, within a certain number
Web of Science:
Web of Knowledge:
Social Science Citation Index:
MEDLINE:
near/number=words near another word in any order, within a certain number
government near/3 fund*