Subject Guides: Literature in Spanish & Portuguese: Primary Sources

Primary Source Databases at HBLL

Arte Publico Hispanic Historical Collection (EBSCO) This link opens in a new window A digital collection of historical content pertaining to U.S. Hispanic history, literature and culture. Manuscript, book, and newspaper content in the areas of Hispanic American civil rights, religion, and women's rights ranging from the eighteenth through the twentieth century.

Center for Research Libraries (CRL)

Sabin Americana Digital Archive (Gale) This link opens in a new window Based on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more. With over 6 million pages from 29,000 works, this collection is a cornerstone in the study of the western hemisphere.
World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean (Gale) This link opens in a new window A rich collection of primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean; academic journals and news feeds covering the region; reference articles and commentary; maps and statistics; audio and video; and more.

Websites

Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts orignially written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes. Intended as a long-term and inter-disciplinary project committed to exploring the intersections between traditional humanities research and digital technologies, it invites scholars from all disciplines to submit their editions of early American texts for publication on this site.
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Digital editions available, not digitized records.
Kobino: Circulación de libros en la Nueva España La circulación de libros en un territorio como el novohispano puede documentarse con las evidencias históricas localizadas y es una tarea que deberíamos hacer permanentemente en sintonía con la protección de nuestro legado bibliográfico. En efecto, toda esa heredad conservada en repositorios públicos y privados que tiene una procedencia colonial es tan sólo una parte patrimonial, la otra, desaparecida o dispersa, puede rastrearse en la rica documentación que testimonia la presencia de ciertos libros en este enorme territorio. Con esta idea, bajo el principio de que las ediciones más que las obras son responsables de la transmisión de ideas, el conocimiento, los miedo o las ilusiones, emprendimos hace años una compilación de datos que dan cuenta de ediciones precisas en circulación durante la vigencia del Vierreinato de la Nueva España. Así nace KOBINO, como una herramienta útil para determinar y relacionar qué ediciones hemos encontrado en esos testimonios coloniales y cuántas personas tuvieron acceso a éstas. Lo que aquí se presenta sólo es una pieza de un rompecabezas cultural en el que intervinieron numerosas comunidades de interpretación contribuyendo así a delinear el mestizaje del que somos resultado. Queremos que sea útil para otros como lo es para quienes intervienen en su compilación.
Primary Sources of 19th-century Colombia and Venezuela (Angel Rafael Almarza) This is a WordPress site that includes PDF documents of primary sources from Venezuela and Colombia (books and newspapers). The owner is one Angel Rafael Almarza.
Digital Library of Literature from Lusophone Countries In addition to digitized works, the BLPL maintains a catalog with bio-bibliographic data from works and authors from lusophone countries; documents from the personal collections of some authors from the State of Santa Catarina are also available.

University Library Collections

Hover over the "i" icon to see a brief description of each resource.

Click on the "more..." link below each link to see if there are digital records available.

Benson Latin American Collection (U.T. Austin) The Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection is one of the premier libraries in the world focused on Latin America and Latin@ Studies. In partnership with the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (LLILAS), the Benson Collection is a regular destination for visitors from throughout the world. The library’s holdings include nearly a million books, magazines, newspapers, journals and other materials. This collection is complemented by a world-class archival collection containing manuscripts, art, maps, letters and other one-of-a-kind materials. The collection is continually enriched by a vigorous acquisitions program and by a growing collection of original digital resources available online.
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Digitized records available.
Latin American and Caribbean Collections (U of Florida) Founded in 1951 to support emerging scholarly interest in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Latin American and Caribbean Collection has since grown to become one of the University of Florida’s preeminent collections. The Latin American and Caribbean Collection (LACC) now holds approximately 500,000 volumes, over 50,000 microforms, thousands of current and historical serial titles, and a large number of digital resources.
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Digitized records available.
Latin American Collections (UNM) There are significant manuscript collections as well as substantial compendiums of silkscreen and photo-offset posters, engravings, lithographs, block prints, photographs and other creative and graphic works such as chapbooks and artists’ books. These materials are held in the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections (CSWR), located in Zimmerman library. Unique archival holdings on New Mexico as a contested territory of the Vice Royalty of New Spain (1598-1821) and independent Mexico (1821-1848) offer excellent opportunities for research in Latin American, Indigenous, Chicana/o and Southwest studies.
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For the digital Latin American Collections:
http://libguides.unm.edu/Special_LatinAmerican_Collections/Digital

For the general UNM Digital Collections: http://econtent.unm.edu/
Cuban Heritage Collection (U of Miami) he Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami collects, preserves, and provides access to primary and secondary sources of enduring historical, research, and artifactual value which relate to Cuba and the Cuban diaspora from colonial times to the present.
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Digital records available
Laures Rare Book Database & Virtual Library (Tokyo) This digital resource will hopefully serve as a useful tool for researchers investigating the complex history of cultural interaction between Europe and Japan in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as well as the history of Western printing techniques in Japan, the history of Western books printed about Japan in Early Modern Europe. The focus of the database is determined by its bibliographical content, namely books on Christianity related to Japan. There are, however, many other artifacts, including maps, both Western and Japanese, that bear witness to this encounter between East and West and that are not directly or solely related to the history of Christianity in Asia. There are also other resources that touch upon the contacts between East Asia and Latin America, in particular through the exchange of information that marked the trade that was carried out by way of the Manila Galleon.
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Digitized records available.

National & Regional Libraries

Biblioteca Nacional de Argentina Colecciones Digitales
Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia Biblioteca Digital Digitized collections from Colombia's National Library.
Biblioteca Nacional Digital do Brasil Includes manuscripts, photographs, recorded music, newspapers, drawings, engravings, books, maps, ephemera, sheet music, pamphlets, and more. Materials accessible by searching in their digital catalog.
Mediateca INAH (Mexico) La Mediateca INAH es el repositorio de acceso abierto del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia de México. Tiene como objetivo preservar y hacer accesible la representación digital del patrimonio histórico y cultural bajo su resguardo así como el conocimiento científico que genera a través de sus centros de educación e investigación.
World Digital Archive (Library of Congress) The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world. The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.
Biblioteca Nacional de Uruguay Colecciones Digitales Digitized collections from the National Library of Uruguay. Items include books, maps, photographs, illustrations, medals, coins, and others.

Topical Digital Collections

Cordel: Literatura popular em verso (Casa Rui Barbosa) O Acervo de Literatura Popular em Versos da Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, o maior da América Latina, atualmente com mais de 9.000 folhetos de cordel foi formado a partir da década de 1960 e, dessa iniciativa resultou uma extensa bibliografia, composta de catálogos, antologias e estudos especializados.
Gabriel García Márquez Archive (UT Austin Ransom Center) The digital archive of Colombian-born writer Gabriel García Márquez includes manuscript drafts of published and unpublished works, research material, photographs, scrapbooks, correspondence, clippings, notebooks, screenplays, printed material, ephemera, and an audio recording of García Márquez's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982. The searchable, online archive is comprised of approximately 27,500 items from García Márquez's papers. The papers (English | Spanish) of Gabriel García Márquez, acquired by the Ransom Center in 2014, include original manuscript material, predominantly in Spanish, for 10 books, more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence, drafts of his 1982 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, more than 40 photograph albums documenting all aspects of his life over nearly nine decades, the Smith Corona typewriters and computers on which he wrote some of the twentieth century's most beloved works, and scrapbooks meticulously documenting his career via news clippings from Latin America and around the world.
Mexican Cookbook Collection (UT San Antonio) UTSA’s Mexican Cookbook Collection is comprised of more than 1,800 cookbooks, from 1789 to the present, with most books dating from 1940-2000. In addition to broad general coverage, the collection includes concentrations in the areas of regional cooking, healthy and vegetarian recipes, corporate advertising cookbooks and manuscript recipe books. UTSA Libraries Digital Collections features a selection of manuscript cookbooks from the collection. These handwritten recipe books provide an intimate view of domestic life and Mexican culinary culture.
Mexico Documents Collection (U of Houston) The Mexico Documents Collection contains 162 documents (personal and official correspondence, government orders, decrees, pamphlets, and government announcements), varying from a parchment document with elaborate signature to official typed decrees from the Office of the President. Chronicling Mexico from 1570-1913, the collection spans four distinct periods of Mexican history: the Colonial Period, Mexican Independence, the Mexican-American War, and the Mexican Revolution. A large portion of the collection is from the years between Mexican Independence (1821) and the end of the Mexican-American War (1849). Nearly all of the items are in Spanish but many have accompanying English translations. Notable individuals found in the collection include Mexican Presidents, Santa Anna de Lopez and Porfirio Diaz, and Jose Joaquin de Hererra. Additionally, some materials document American military actions in Mexico during the Mexican-American War. Lastly, there are an assortment of documents chronicling religion in Mexico as well as business and land transactions. The original materials are available in UH Libraries' Special Collections in the Mexico Documents Collection.
Primeros Libros de las Américas A collection of books printed in Mexico in the 16th century available in digital format.
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Impresos americanos del siglo XVI en las bibliotecas del mundo / American imprints from the 16th century in libraries of the world

Institutional Repositories

Repositorio Institucional (Tec. de Monterrey, Mex) The "Patrimonio Cultural" section has digitized primary source documents in the following collections: Fototeca Manuscritos Novohispanos en Lenguas Indígenas Colección Ignacio Bernal (some document series are restricted).
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Digitized records available.
Digital Collections of the Ibero-American Institute (Berlin) The Digital Collections contain all the digitalized publications of the Ibero-American Institute. You can search the digitalized objects or you may access the different collections. If you want to save the results of your search and exchange them with other users, or annotate the digitalized objects you are working with, you have to use the "login" and create your personal user account. Furthermore, you can create your own virtual bookshelf.
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Digitized records available.
Centro de Estudios de Historia de México (CEHM) El Centro de Estudios de Historia de México Carso Fundación Carlos Slim, fue creado en 1965. El objetivo fue y es, la recuperación de obras impresas y documentales concernientes a la historia de México, desde la época virreinal hasta nuestros días. Contamos con ochocientas mil piezas entre libros y manuscritos, así como cinco salones para albergar las colecciones más selectas. Entre nuestras actividades se encuentran la publicación de nuestros catálogos tanto de la biblioteca como de su archivo para facilitar su consulta. Nuestra actual sede es un digno marco a tantos y tan variados libros y documentos de nuestro pasado mexicano en el sur de la ciudad de México.
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Digitized records available.

Online Digital Collections: Images

Archivo Fotográfico de la Universidad de Concepción (Chile) El Archivo Fotográfico de la Universidad de Concepción (AFUDEC) tiene por misión preservar, investigar y difundir el Patrimonio Documental / Visual de la Universidad de Concepción, recurso informativo que aporta al desarrollo de la docencia, la investigación y la cultura en sus diversos ámbitos. Somos un espacio dialogante y abierto a la comunidad, que proyecta su gestión dentro y desde el ámbito regional.
Braceros in Oregon Photograph Collection (Oregon State) An archival photograph collection of the Braceros that worked in the agricultural fields and orchards of Oregon, 1942-1947. The 102 photographs in this collection document the activities of Oregon's Bracero workers - their cultivation and harvesting work in the fields and orchards as well as the farm labor camps in which they lived. Most of the photographs were taken by Oregon State College Extension staff members as part of a larger effort to document the various groups that contributed to alleviate the state's severe shortage of farm labor.
Jeffrey R. Parsons Archaeological Sites Images (U of Michigan) The Jeffrey R. Parsons digital images are part of the Jeffrey R. Parsons collection housed at the University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library. The images document the archaeologist's field work in the Basin of Mexico and in Peru and are part of the collections' visual materials series. These depict terrain survey work, a variety of ceramic work, and multiple archaeological sites Among the locations documented here are Ixtapalapa, Zumpango, Texcoco, Chalco, Xochimilco, Jauja, Huasahuasi, Junin, and Tarma.
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Jeffrey R. Parsons was Curator of Latin American Archaeology and Director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He was a professor at the same institution for over forty years starting in 1966 and carried out extensive research on settlement patterns in the basin of Mexico, in Peru, and in many other countries. Parsons is known for his role in the development of systematic settlement survey methods in archaeology, a methodology which has become common in archaeological work around the world. Material in the collection include papers, maps, site surveys, photo negatives, aerial photographs and digital scans of the negatives.
Jose Guadalupe Posada collection, circa 1875-1913 (Stanford) The collection contains broadsides, pamphlets, and prints by the Mexican artist Jose Guadalupe Posada. Born in poverty in 1852, Jose Guadalupe Posada became the "Printmaker to the Mexican People," an influence on future Mexican artists such as Orozco and Rivera, and is often compared to such icons as Goya and Daumier. Posada is labelled an artist, a folk illustrator and a political cartoonist; no matter how he is categorized, it is clear that, through his prolific career, "an inarticulate public found expression."
The Luso-Hispanic New World in Early Prints and Photographs (NY Public Lib) The books whose images make up this digital presentation offer a rich sampling of the extraordinary variety of NYPL's pictorial holdings on Latin America from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Images from two remarkable works document aspects of the great civilizations of Mesoamerica, as seen through European eyes. Other books digitized for this collection present wonderful color prints published to enhance accounts of travel and exploration throughout Central America, Peru and the Southern Cone. This digital presentation will grow over time, becoming an even richer source for visual information about monuments, landscape, and local cultures.
Photographic Archive of Historic Havana (Hampshire College)
Photographs from the Leonor Villegas de Magnón Papers (U of Houston) This collection contains 146 photographs and postcards related to Leonor Villegas de Magnón’s personal life, political activism with the international relief service La Cruz Blanca (the White Cross), and the Mexican Revolution. Photographs highlight Magnón’s pioneering work along the Mexico-Texas border as well as her relationships with fellow activists, participants of the Revolution, and friends and family.

Online Digital Collections: Pamphlets

Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection (Harvard) Scarce and unique pamphlets, primarily from Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico, published during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Latin American Ephemera Collection (Princeton) The Latin American Ephemera Collection contains thousands of digitized pamphlets, brochures, flyers, posters, placards and other printed items created since around the last quarter of the 20th century by a wide variety of social activists, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, political parties, public policy think tanks, and other types of organizations across Latin America, in order to publicize their views, positions, agendas, policies, events, and activities. The vast majority are rare, hard-to-find primary sources unavailable elsewhere.
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Digitized documents available.
Central American Broadsides (U of Kansas) This collection features broadsides from the Kenneth Spencer Research Library's William J. Griffith Collection of Guatemala and Central America. Dating from the 1820s to 1922, the broadsides are primarily Guatemalan, with a smaller number from Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. Many pertain to national and local politics and include election materials, political manifestos, and government pronouncements.
Dupee Mexican History Collection Broadsides (Brown) The Dupee Collection offers nearly 200 broadsides published after the Mexican republic secured its independence in 1821. Chronicled within the broadsides are Mexican partisan politics, religious and anti-clerical debates, popular literature and drama, domestic revolutions and armed conflict with the United States. Most are Spanish-language sources written by Mexican citizens and published in Mexico.
Alfredo Montalvo Bolivian Digital Pamphlets Collection (Cornell) A collection of pamphlets from Bolivia donated by bookseller Alfredo Montalvo.

Online Digital Collections: Newspapers & Magazines

Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (AhiRa) El Archivo Histórico de Revistas Argentinas (AhiRa) agrupa a docentes e investigadores formados en la Universidad de Buenos Aires, en las áreas de letras, historia y comunicación, interesados particularmente en las revistas argentinas y su inserción en los debates estéticos, políticos e ideológicos de la historica cultural de nuestro país. AhiRa pone a disposición de la mayor cantidad de lectores, colecciones digitalizadas de revistas y de otras publicaciones periódicas que representaron momentos significativos en el desarrollo del periodismo cultural en Argentina, acompañadas de sus índices, breves ensayos y artículos críticos, que diseñan algunas líneas de lectura e interpretación.
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Digitized records available.
Hemeroteca Nacional Digital de México (HNDM) La HNDM, provee información hemerográfica y servicios de búsqueda en los contenidos de las representaciones digitales de las páginas de las publicaciones que la conforman. La HNDM publica solo los títulos cuyos contenidos han pasado a ser de dominio público. En consecuencia, el usuario de la HNDM sólo puede acceder en internet a materiales clasificados en esta categoría.
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Digitized records available.
Pepines: Catálogo de Historietas de la Hemeroteca Nacional (Mexico) Con este Catálogo la Hemeroteca abre las puertas a la consulta del acervo público más importante de historieta mexicana con que cuenta nuestro país, acervo que abarca más de siete mil volúmenes encuadernados y otro tanto de revistas sin empastar. Hemos bautizado este Catálogo con el nombre de Pepines porque con esta palabra –derivada del título de la legendaria revista Pepín– denominaban lectoras y lectores de los años cincuenta del Siglo XX a las revistas de historieta popular.