Publications and Bibliographies

Reviewed by James E. Nalen, Central Michigan University, Off-Campus Library Services, Centreville, Virginia

The Chicano Database (CDB) is a product of the Ethnic Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley that focuses on both the Chicano and the broader Latino populations in the United States. The CDB incorporates a number of print publications, including: the Chicano Periodical Index; the Chicano Index; Arte Chicano: A Comprehensive Annotated Bibliography of Chicano Art, 1965-1981; the Chicano Anthology Index; the Chicana Studies Index: Twenty Years of Gender Research, 1971-1991; and, Hispanic Mental Health Research: A Reference Guide. The CDB also includes records from the Spanish Speaking Mental Health Database (SSMHD), a resource developed by Amado Padilla and Paul Aranda beginning in 1972; the SSMHD was added to the CDB in 1991 (Castillo-Speed, 1999).

Subscriptions to the Web version of the Chicano Database are available from RLG Citation Resources, 1200 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041-1100; (TEL) 800-537-7546 (TEL); (FAX) 650-964-0943; bl.ric@rlg.org; http://www.rlg.org/citadel.html. Annual subscription rates vary depending on RLG membership and the number of users; consortial pricing is also available.

The Chicano Database is also made available for delivery on CD-ROM by the Ethnic Studies Library Publications Unit, 30 Stephens Hall, No. 2360, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2360; (TEL) 510-643-0552; (FAX) 510-643-8433; csl@library.berkeley.edu; http://eslibrary.berkeley.edu.

This review is based on RLG’s Web version of the Chicano Database which uses the Eureka interface.

Introduction

The CDB is useful for conducting research on many aspects of the Chicano and Latino populations. The focus of this review is to examine how well it provides access to research in the social sciences on these important demographic groups in American society.

Chicanos, a term that refers “broadly to people of Mexican descent residing in the United States” (Rosaldo, 1985, p. 411), comprised 7.3 % of the total U.S. population in the United States according to the 2000 Census, an increase of 52.9% from the 1990 Census. While the Hispanic population comprised 12.5% of the total U.S. population in 2000, Mexican-Americans accounted for 58.5% of this total (Guzmán, 2001, p. 1-2). (As of July 1, 2001, the Hispanic population represented 13% of the total population [Clemetson, 2003].)

The CDB offers social scientists a unique tool with which to access research on acculturation, assimilation, social networks, social movements, and migration, among a geographically and historically diverse population. Since the CDB itself grew out of the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s, with its focus on addressing the needs of the Chicano community, the CDB also provides access to a significant amount of applied social research.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the scope of the CDB was expanded to include research on the broader Latino population in the United States. This change probably is a reflection of demographic changes in the overall Hispanic population: while the Chicano population is still growing, its percentage of the total Hispanic population is declining. This demographic shift has also manifested itself in higher education, with the folding of some Chicano studies programs into broader Latino or ethnic studies programs (see Rodriguez, 2000). Thus, the CDB has shifted its focus to become a significant resource for the study of the Latino population in the United States.

Scope, Size, Coverage & Currency

The Chicano Database indexes a variety of materials drawn from a range of disciplines, including: history, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, economics, political science, social work, women’s studies, and literature. As of November 2001, the CDB fully indexes 129 serials, such as the Chicano-Latino Law Review, Critica, Perspectives in Mexican American Studies, and Saguaro, and selectively indexes many others. (The serials source list can be accessed from the database help guide or at http://www.rlg.org/citadel/CDBtitle.html). The database also indexes dissertations, reports, books, and book chapters. While it is difficult to determine the number of records by source language found in the database, several broad subject searches consistently revealed a significantly larger number of records for English-language sources than for the other languages represented in the database—Spanish, bilingual (English/Spanish), Portuguese, and Calo (a Chicano dialect).

The bulk of the records in CDB are from the 1960s to the present; there is also selective coverage of significant materials to the early 1900s. The CDB contained more than 57,364 records as of August 11, 2003, and it is updated quarterly.

Electronic Record Structure, Retrieval, and Display

Each record in the Chicano Database consists of a full bibliographic citation (author, title, source, and date), multiple subject headings, the shelf location for the item in UC Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Library, the genre or form (publication type) of the material, and a record identification number. Many of the records also include an abstract/summary.

The CDB supports three levels of searching: basic, advanced, and command line.
Searching can be by keyword, author, title word, subject word, abstract word, and journal title. The advanced and command line levels support Boolean searching. Truncation is enabled on all three levels of searching, while pre-limiting by date and language is enabled on the advanced and command line levels of searching. Search results can be limited by date, language, and form/genre (e.g. book, journal article) using any level of searching.

Subject word searching allows one to browse subject headings. For example, a subject word search for “bracero?” displays the subject headings “Bracero Program,” “Braceros,” “Rancho El Bracero Fresno Ca,” and “Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the I.N.S (book review).”

Results can be displayed as Brief, List or Full. The Brief display contains basic bibliographic information for each record; List display shows truncated author, title and year information for each record; the Full display includes subject headings for each record. Within the List display, results can be sorted by author, title, or year. Results can be marked for printing, emailing or downloading when using the Brief or List displays. Within the Full and Brief displays, individual records from discrete searches can be saved for later downloading, emailing, or printing.

A user’s preferences for sorting, viewing, emailing and downloading records can be set using Eureka’s preferences feature which is located at the top of the search page. This feature is particularly useful for establishing the download formats for various bibliographic management software programs such as ProCite and EndNote.

Indexing and Subject Access

The level and quality of indexing appears relatively consistent throughout the database. Subject terms are drawn from the Chicano Thesaurus; access to this thesaurus is not available within the database. Abstracts are available for some records. However, a search of the subject heading “Bracero Program” yielded only three abstracts out of 47 results. Abstracts are searchable.

User Guidance

An extensive online help guide is available for the Chicano Database. The guide describes basic and advanced searching strategies, and provides guidance on narrowing, viewing, sorting, printing, emailing, and saving results. The help guide also includes a concise description of the database and links to a listing of source materials.

Document Availability

The CDB, as with other RLG Citation Resources, utilizes OpenURL, allowing individual database records to link with a library’s print and electronic holdings.

Recommendations for Improvement

The content of the Chicano Database could be enhanced through inclusion of records describing significant Web resources. An increase in the number of abstracts would also make the database more useful to researchers.

While RLG’s Eureka search interface is fairly intuitive, the ability to mark, sort, and save records should be made available from all three of the display types—Brief, List and Full. This reviewer found this lack of consistency confusing.

Conclusion

The Chicano Database is a necessary resource for colleges and universities with programs in Chicano, Latino and/or ethnic studies. At the same time, students at institutions with programs in social work, sociology, anthropology, comparative literature, and many other subjects will find the database’s unique focus highly useful. The CDB’s selective and full indexing of a variety of materials, some dating to the early 1900s, makes it a unique tool for researchers in the social sciences.

References Cited

Castillo-Speed, L. (1999, February). The Chicano Database: Historical roots and new additions. RLG Focus 36. Retrieved January 23, 2003, from http://www.rlg.org/r-focus/i36.chicano.html

Clemetson, L. (2003, January 22). Hispanics now largest minority, Census shows. New York Times, p. A1. Retrieved May 28, 2003, from LexisNexis Academic database.

Guzmán, B. (2001, May). The Hispanic population. 2000 Census Brief. Retrieved January 9, 2003, from http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/c2kbr01-3.pdf

Rodriguez, R. (2000). Chicano studies. Black Issues in Higher Education, 17(16), 26-31.

Rosaldo, R. (1985). Chicano studies, 1970-1984. Annual Review of Anthropology, 14, 405-427.