Puerto Rican & Latino Studies 

The term Latino was not officially used until 1990 when the US Census added this category for those individuals that wouldn't identify themselves as Hispanic. Today both term Hispanic American and Latinos are used interchangeably to identify individual of Puerto Rican, Mexican American, Cuban American and any other descendant of a Spanish or Portuguese speaking, Latin American or Caribbean country. Because the concept of Hispanic/Latino is one based on ethnicity and nationality and not race, their meaning is in constant change. But, in term of research, what you need to be awared is:

• The term Hispanic American is more widely used in Book Catalog and Databases to organize materials in this subject
• The term Latino is not used widely for subject classification but it can be found more in the title of books and articles

When using HOMER, the UCONN library catalog, consider searching using the following keywords in the following search fields:

• Hispanic American in the Subject Headings, Keyword and Title Fields
• Latino(s), Latina(s) in the Title and Keyword fields only.

Both term Hispanic American and Latino are umbrella terms, meaning that they represent a wide variety of people and nationalities embedded in one term. In you want to research a particular group or nationality, consider broadening your search by using other terminology that represent the group you want to study. For example, Puerto Rican, Boricua, Nuyorican, Chicano, Mexican American, Salvadorean, etc... This is particular important when searching databases since some studies focus in one or two groups.

The library has acquired through the years many microfilms copies of rare and hard to find newspapers from Latin American and the Caribbean, grey literature and other materials that are not available in print. Most of this newspapers are from Puerto Rico. For a whole list of Latin American and Caribbean Microfilms visit:

http://www.lib.uconn.edu/research/guides/lasmicro.pdf