Oxford LibGuides: Latin American History: Special collections

Finding external collections

The following links can help you find archives and other resources outside of Oxford's own collections.

Archives Hub
Use this to find unique sources for your research. The Archives Hub enables you to search across a wealth of archives held at nearly 200 UK institutions.
British Library - Americas resources
Regional page created by the British Library to aid researchers in navigating its vast collections - it holds over 17,000 titles printed in Mexico alone!
LANIC history collection
Highly respected portal with links to digital collections, bibliographies, repositories of primary sources and Latin Americanist professional associations.
Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room
The Library of Congress has amassed the world's finest collection on the history and culture of Latin America, Iberia, and the Caribbean, including many rare items. This page has links to information about their collections, including guides and online exhibitions.
Latin American and Caribbean Studies Research Portal
Hosted by the Institute of Latin American Studies, the portal provides a searchable directory of Latin American and Caribbean Studies research resources in the UK. The site displays lists of academic staff, theses in progress or completed in Latin American and / or Caribbean Studies and UK universities that run courses that focus on Latin America and / or the Caribbean.

Digital collections

Political Archives Project
This website is the product of a project sponsored jointly by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICS) and the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) at the University of London, aiming to improve access to and use of their extensive collections of political ephemera. These collections are now fully searchable, and in addition a selection of the items can be viewed online in the gallery.

Special collections

Oxford has the following special collections of interest to Latin America:

Pring-Mill collection (Taylor Institution Library)

Robert Pring-Mill (1924-2005) was appointed to a university lecturership in Spanish in 1952. This he held until his retirement in 1988, together with a tutorial fellowship at St Catherine’s College (1965-88) and college lecturerships at New College (1956-88) and Exeter College (1963-81). As well as donating material to the library throughout his life, he made a significant bequest of great interest to Latin Americanists amounting to around 1500 volumes.

Although much of the collection focuses on literary works, there is also a strong social and historical aspect to the material. There are a number of books and political pamphlets relating to the Nicaraguan Revolution, covering the Sandinista movement, the role of women in social change, as well as representations of conflict in literature. There is also coverage of general Latin American history and politics.

If you are interested in working with this collection, please contact the librarian.

Colin Clarke’s Oaxaca collection (Latin American Centre Library)

Colin Clarke is an Emeritus Professor of Geography at Oxford University and an Emeritus Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. In 2003, he gave his Mexican and Central American books to the Bodleian Latin American Centre Library. At the core of this donation was a specialist collection on the Mexican state of Oaxaca, dealing with its geography, history, demography, economic development, anthropology and archaeology.

This collection, purchased in Mexico and the UK, was put together between 1976 and 2000, when Oxford University Press published Professor Clarke's book Class, Ethnicity and Community in Southern Mexico: Oaxaca's Peasantries. The collection contains more than 500 books and journal offprints, bibliographies, gazetteers, typescripts and census materials. The census materials run from before the Mexican Revolution until 1990, and focus on population (though some agricultural, commercial and industrial data are included).

The collection is indispensable for any humanities or social sciences researcher working on Oaxaca. For more information please contact the Latin American Centre library.

Latin American newspapers

Latin American Newspaper Census
This Provisional Census represents the first stage of a proposed catalogue of current Latin American newspapers held in libraries in the UK. Covering the British Library and a selection of major UK libraries, the census lists unbroken runs of issues of five or more years since 1970.