Anne R. Roschelle
The Institute for Research on Women (IROW) and the Center for Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC) Womenet Bibliographic Data Base on Puerto Rican women has been growing at a rapid pace. This project, funded by a grant from the New York State/United University Professions Joint Labor Management Committee on Affirmative Action, will provide reference information on the available research on Puerto Rican women published in both English and Spanish. The summer of 1990 was spent conducting an extensive literature search both at the University at Albany campus and at the library of the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos at CUNY/Hunter College.
Initial reference lists were found by examining well known Latino journals, important books on Puerto Rican women and searching existing data bases. Since then, many other sources have been uncovered. With the aid of University at Albany librarian Sally Knapp, many on-line and CD ROM data bases were searched including: Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Sociological Abstracts, the Agricultural Database, National Council on Family Relations, Academic Index, Medical Abstracts, America History and Life, National Criminal Justice Resource Center, and the Social Science Citation Index. The most useful proved to be the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, Sociological Abstracts, American History and Life, and the Social Science Citation Index which together provided a total of 115 records. Ms. Knapp was able to use Biblio-link software to download the data so it would be compatible with Pro-Cite, the bibliographic software used by the WOMENET project.
Information was also obtained through the more traditional methods of searching the Sociological, Psychological, Dissertation, Women's Studies, and Humanities abstracts. Inter-Library Loan has proven to be an indispensable resource to obtain material not owned by our library.
In addition, a trip to CUNY/Hunter's library for the Centro de Estudios Puertorriquenos proved to be exciting and extremely beneficial. The staff was extremely hospitable, and tolerant of the need to keep refilling their xerox machine with more paper! Copies of dissertation abstracts, articles, and book chapters were made and references to be obtained upon my return to Albany were gathered.
Throughout the Fall 1990 semester we have continued to gather and abstract articles, books, reports, conference proceedings, and currently have over 350 references entered in the computer with 150 more waiting to be included. Additional information will be gained during an early Spring 1991 trip to Women's Studies library collections in Puerto Rico by project organizers Edna Acosta-Belen and Chris Bose. Shortly thereafter the final editing and printing of the bibliographic data base will be completed, in time to be distributed at the SUNY-wide faculty development seminar on "integrating Puerto Rican Women into the Curriculum and Research" scheduled for June 7-10, 1991 and described elsewhere in this issue.
The Joint Labor Management Committee grant allows print versions to be mailed free of charge to SUNY faculty who request them before June 15, 1991, and at cost to others. By Fall 1991, disk copies will also be available. For information on how to obtain a copy, write Chris Bose, Director, IROW, University at Albany, SUNY, Albany, New York 12222.