Vol. 67, No. 5
by Edward A. Riedinger
Tropical and exotic, mammoth and developing, Brazil has hauntingly captured international interest for centuries. Its land mass makes it the fifth-largest country in the world, extending over half of South America and stretching from north of the equator to south of the Tropic of Capricorn. The Brazilian population is also the world’s fifth largest, with nearly 200 million people. Its language, Portuguese, is spoken by half the inhabitants of South America and a third of Latin America. Indeed, Portuguese is a major language among Atlantic Rim countries. Spoken from Brazil to Portugal and from Cape Verde to Guinea-Bissau and Angola, the lusophone population around the Atlantic basin amounts to nearly a quarter of a billion primary and secondary speakers. Brazil’s trillion-dollar economy is the largest in Latin America and among the top ten in the world.
For students, researchers, and the generally curious, what online resources exist that can respond to their questions and interests regarding this extraordinary country? Resources provided here fall largely into five categories: indexes and catalogs, gateways, full-text retrieval databases, and audiovisual materials.
Indexes and catalogs
• Clase and Periódica. These two databases are maintained by the National Autonomous University of Mexico for indexing periodical literature from Latin America in the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. Both databases are available through the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and can be accessed in FirstSearch simultaneously with ArticleFirst. A keyword search in Clase and Periódica for Brasil brings up nearly 40,000 hits; and Brazil, more than 18,000. Access: http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/20031013.htm.
• Handbook of Latin American Studies and the Hispanic American Periodicals Index (HAPI Online). These are the two major English-language indexes that most comprehensively cover Brazil. Maintained by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress, the handbook indexes and abstracts scholarly articles and books from and on Latin America and Brazil in all disciplines for the period from 1935 to the present. HAPI is housed at the University of California-Los Angeles and indexes scholarly articles on and from Latin American and Brazil for the period from 1970 to the present. Access: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas/ and http://hapi.ucla.edu/.
• Libweb. Libweb connects one directly to more than a dozen online catalogs of Brazilian academic and research libraries. Among them is the catalog of the library of the major university in Brazil, the University of São Paulo. Its library system uses MARC record standards and contributes to OCLC. Libweb accesses the two largest U.S. collections of Latin American and Brazilian holdings at the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and the University of Texas-Austin. It also connects to the leading specialized collections on Brazil: the Newberry Library, the Lilly Library at Indiana University-Bloomington, the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, and the Oliveira Lima Library at the Catholic University of America. Access: http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/.
Full-text retrieval databases
• Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes. The full-text library of Spanish-language materials here includes some works on Brazil in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Access: http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/Buscar.html?texto=brasil&tipoMuestra=materias&idRes=0&PM=0&portal=0.
• Biblioteca Virtual Nacional of the National Library of Portugal. An extraordinary array of historic texts on Brazil may be accessed through this site. It includes a digitized edition of the first history of Brazil (1576). Access: http://bnd.bn.pt/memorias/historia/historia-lista-obras.html.
• Full-text retrieval from the official journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, Hispania, is available at http://www.cervantesvirtual.com/FichaObra.html?Ref=3611. Retrieval of articles from Lusotopie, a French journal that focuses on Brazilian studies within the context of Portuguese colonization and the lusophone community, is available at http://www.lusotopie.sciencespobordeaux.fr/sommaire.html.
• JSTOR and Project MUSE. For full-text scholarly articles on Brazil in English, the two major sources are JSTOR and Project MUSE. JSTOR includes the complete serial runs of five major Latin American-related journals (to which more will be added) with numerous ancillary journals in the humanities and social science. Project MUSE includes the major journal for Brazilian studies, the Luso-Brazilian Review, from the University of Wisconsin. However, full-text coverage only began with volume 42 (2004). JSTOR is soon to include the complete run. Access: http://www.jstor.org/ and http://muse.jhu.edu/.
• National Library of Brazil, the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional. The full-text retrieval of books from the classics of Brazilian literature may be read at this site. One accesses the catalog of over 1,000 entries by clicking on “Digital Library.” The site is partially navigable in English. Access: http://www.bn.br/Script/index.asp.
• SciELO—Scientific Electronic Library Online. Online full-text retrieval of Brazilian scholarly periodical literature is provided through SciELO. It indexes and provides retrieval of journal articles primarily in the technical, physical, and medical sciences, but also in the humanities and applied social sciences. It retrieves not only Brazilian scholarly texts, but also texts from Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, and Spain. Holding articles published in English, Spanish, or Portuguese, the site is navigable in these languages as well. It is maintained by two major Brazilian universities in conjunction with the Brazilian National Research Council. Full-text Brazilian journals can also be accessed through the Directory of Open Access Journals at http://www.doaj.org/home. Access: http://www.scielo.org/index.php?lang=en.
• The University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center. This site allows intriguing searches for Brazilian studies. By entering Brazil in its e-books search page, one retrieves a curious, and possibly serendipitous, amalgam from dozens of books in English that mention Brazil. A similar search for Brazil in netLibrary (http://www.netlibrary.com) results in several dozen titles of a timely contemporary nature. Access: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/ot2www-ebooks?specfile=/texts/english/ebooks/ebooks.o2w.
• yourDictionary.com. yourDictionary/Romance Languages. The most plentiful full-text reference works available are dictionaries for Portuguese. Nearly a dozen general and almost three dozen specialized dictionaries (including engineering, law, medicine, petroleum, and even mountain climbing) are available at yourDictionary/Romance Languages (http://www.yourdictionary.com
/languages/romance.html#portuguese). Grammars can be found on the yourDictionary site (http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammars3.html#portuguese). A site at Harvard University Department of Romance Languages and Resources/Language Resources includes both grammars and dictionaries (http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~rll/resources/portuguese/language_resources.html). Access: yourdictionary.com.
Gateways
• Harvard Directory of Scholars in Brazilian Studies and Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). There are two online directories that list Brazilianists, scholars who specialize in Brazilian Studies. One is the Harvard Directory of Scholars in Brazilian Studies and the other is BRASA at Vanderbilt University. Both, however, have gatekeepers insofar as they require a password for access. Access: http://drclas.fas.harvard.edu/directories/brazil/index.php and http://www.brasa.org/index.
• Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC) and NewsLink. The major gateway to Web sites for Latin American Studies is LANIC at the University of Texas-Austin. The section for Brazil consolidates access to hundreds of sites. It is organized by disciplines, some of which include: agriculture, architecture, arts, cinema, economics, history, indigenous peoples, law, literature, religion, and sports. Brazilian newspapers (and magazines) are available at LANIC and Newslink (newslink.org). Brazilian newspapers are not indexed; however, some leading ones now have archives of past issues. These include the Folha de São Paulo (from 1994 to present), O Globo (Rio de Janeiro, from 1997 to present), and the Gazeta Mercantil (Brazilian equivalent to Wall Street Journal). Access: http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/brazil/.
• Ohio State University Libraries. A site at Ohio State University Libraries offers a gateway to online reference resources for Brazilian Studies: e-brasref (http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/OnlineRefLibraryBrazStuds.htm). It is divided into sections for government and public life, economics and statistics, transportation and communication, nature, language, literature, education, history, biography, culture, and fine and popular arts. A sample of some of the full-text resources it accesses include:• Banco Central do Brazil (Bank of Brazil). Economic reports and financial data tables are available here. Access: http://www.bcb.gov.br/?english.
• Brazilian Newspapers. Brazilian newspapers published in English may be found here. Access: http://www.world-newspapers.com/brazil.html.
• Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). A professional perspective on developments in Brazil is provided by BRASA from its site at Vanderbilt University. Access: http://www.brasa.org/.
• brazilink and brazilmax. Two informative and entertaining ways of accompanying contemporary events in Brazil. Access: http://www.brazilink.org/ and http://www.brazilmax.com/.
• Dicionário Cravo Albin. A dictionary of Brazilian popular music. Access: http://www.maria-brazil.org/fdind.htm.
• Enciclopédia Itaú Cultural / Teatro and Enciclopédia [Itaú] de Artes Visuais. These are encyclopedias of Brazilian theater and the fine arts. The latter is richly illustrated with images of Brazilian paintings, pictures, and photography in high-quality digitized reproduction. Access: http://www.itaucultural.org.br/aplicexternas/enciclopedia_teatro/ and http://www.itaucultural.org.br/index.cfm?cd_pagina=1985.
• History and Culture of Brazil. The Ohio State site also includes an online tutorial/syllabus for the study of Brazilian history and culture divided into six parts. These include an introductory section on methodology, followed by a second section detailing the geographical platform of Brazil, and four sections that chronicle Brazil’s history from the 16th to 21st centuries, focusing on its ethnic, socioeconomic, and political development. Access: http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/indxclas_0_tblcontnts.htm.
• LATweb. This site includes information for Bolivian, Cuban, Dutch Antillean, Ecuadorean, Haitian, and Peruvian studies. Access: http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/LATHOME.HTML#SPESERV.
• Maria’s Cookbook Maria Brazil. A recipe book of Brazilian cuisine, this site is also among the most popular for Brazilian popular culture. Access: http://www.maria-brazil.org/fdind.htm.
Audiovisual materials
• Public Access (Non-fee) Internet Resources for the Portuguese Language. A guide to online audiovisual materials for the study of Portuguese is included in section four of this site. This site also indicates how to access Brazilian radio and television. Especially important are the educational A-V language aids referenced at the site (http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-59702004000100017):
“For language education and teaching, the U.S. Department of Education maintains the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), which maintains the Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics (CLL). Details of its resources are at http://www.cal.org/ericcll/about.html. Of special importance for Portuguese are the resources maintained by CLL on less commonly taught languages, described at http://www.cal.org/ericcll/faqs/rgos/lctl.html. Among the Web sites referenced by CLL is iloveLanguages at http://www.ilovelanguages.com/. It references over 100 Web sites related to learning or teaching Portuguese.
Related to CLL resources are those of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) at the University of Minnesota. Chief among its resources for Portuguese is a site at http://www.carla.umn.edu/lctl/db/ that allows one to search for Portuguese courses, during the regular academic year or in summer sessions, at U.S. colleges and universities; in study abroad programs, in primary and secondary schools, and through distance education opportunities. Moreover, it also offers a virtual picture album for Portuguese at http://www.carla.umn.edu/lctl/vpa/Portuguese/VPAgrid-1.html as a supplementary teaching resource.”
• Open access to videos about Brazil is available from several sources and in varied manners. O Globo maintains one of the largest online media centers at http://gmc.globo.com/GMC/0,,2465,00.html. In Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/) one can enter a search phrase for a Brazilian topic and then set the results to “video.” Entering “Rio de Janeiro” results in more than 600 video hits. In both Yahoo and Google (http://www.google.com/), one can find images by entering a search term related to Brazil and selecting the “images” tab. “Rio de Janeiro” in Google or Yahoo retrieves a quarter million images.
• Historical photos, manuscripts, and audio recordings are available from the research and documentation center of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, the Centro de Pesquisa e Documentão (CPDOC) at http://www.cpdoc.fgv.br/comum/htm/ (click “navegando na história”). Extensive links to audiovisual resources for Brazilian history and biography are available on e-brasref at http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/OnlineRefLibraryBrazStuds.htm#pa0. E-brasref also lists numerous sites for studying about or listening to Brazilian popular and classical music at http://library.osu.edu/sites/latinamerica/OnlineRefLibraryBrazStuds.htm#pa0.
Conclusion
Electronic resources for Brazilian studies originating both in and outside Brazil are almost “amazonic.” This richness is due not only to the size and importance of the country, but also because it has been a leader in Latin America in the development of telecommunications, television, media, electronics, and the computer industry. Fundamental national interests of market share and regional integration and the country’s allure for international investment capital have stimulated these developments. Online resources for Brazilian studies, therefore, are as abundant as they are expanding. This column offers a hint of the richness of information and techniques for access that are available. A Brazilian expression for “getting things done” is having jeito (JAY-too, that is, “know-how,” practical “savoir-faire”). Herewith, therefore, has been a hand up for your jeito in doing Brazilian studies.