Top Shelf

by Laura Galván-Estrada and Mark Hammond

This week's top reference resources were selected by SWC Librarians Laura and Mark.

Book Selection
Latinas in the United States: a Historical Encyclopedia
Eds. Vicki L. Ruiz & Virginia Sanchez Korrol
3 vols.
Reference E184.S75 L35 2006 and as e-book via NetLibrary.

These recent encyclopedia (2006) contains a wealth of information and it is one of a kind. In three volumes, about 600 hundred women are covered. The set starts with a five historical overviews of Latinas in the different regions of the United States. Each biographical entry is supported by a list of sources, and, most of the time, a photograph. There is a List of Biographical Entries, where you can find out entries by subject area. Besides entries on individuals, the encyclopedia also contains entries on important topics as they relate to Latinas in the U.S., such as "Health: current issues and trends" and "Telenovelas". Though the set contains entries on some contemporary women (you'll find entries for Cristina Saralegui and Gloria Estefan), the entries are mostly historical, as the title implies.
-Laura


Website Selection
My picks for websites this week are not selected for their usefulness to most people, but rather to illustrate how the web makes it economically feasible to make relatively obscure information available to researchers around the world. These are both sources that I have used recently in my own research.

The first is Fordham University's Internet Medieval Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html
This site collects and makes available a large collection of medieval documents ranging from the renowned to the truly obscure. When I needed to see examples of medieval promissory notes and other commercial documents, this site was just the ticket.

The second is a more limited site that I used just the other day. I needed to read the Assizes of Ariano, the laws issued by King Roger of Sicily in the 12th century. There are only two surviving copies of the Assizes, both in Latin and both in libraries in Europe. I was able to find a recent translation into English on the Medieval Texts in Translation page of the School of History at the University of Leeds: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/history/weblearning/MedievalHistoryTextCentre/medievalTexts.htm
-Mark