Handbook of Latin American Studies Launches New Digital Collection

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April 13, 2026

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Handbook of Latin American Studies Launches New Digital Collection

Collage featuring four black and white images, including an animal skeleton, a group of musicians, a mountainous landscape, and a large stela, with the text: Handbook of Latin American Studies — Collage with Library of Congress images representing HLAS topics. 2021. Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room, Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division.

Handbook of Latin American Studies Launches New Digital Collection

April 13, 2026, Posted by: Alyson Williams

On April 10, 2026, the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) launched a new digital collection. The HLAS Collection provides access to descriptions, or annotations, written by external experts called Contributing Editors and the complete bibliographic information for nearly 300,000 publications about Latin America. The collection encompasses Handbook Volume 35 (1960s) to the present. Access to older annotations (volumes 1-34, 1936-1960s) and all the accompanying bibliographic essays is under development.

Screenshot of the Handbook of Latin American Studies about this collection page. — Screenshot of the About the Collection page for the new Handbook of Latin American Studies digital collection

HLAS provides descriptions of thousands of books, articles, and other materials. Scholars add 2,000-3,000 new annotations per year. Because the books and articles are selected by professors (the Contributing Editors), they are the “scholarly,” “reliable,” and “academic” sources that instructors usually require for assignments like research papers. In the HLAS Collection, search by keyword, and filter the results using the HLAS Topics or Contributing Editor or country of publication.

Screenshot of results page with the list of facets on the left and two collection items listed on the right — Screenshot of the new HLAS Collection results page

There are many uses for this go-to resource in Latin American Studies. Students can make use of this collection to identify key, scholarly resources for research papers. Professors and librarians can use the HLAS Collection in teaching the history of Latin American studies or to help develop their library’s collections. Researchers can explore the annotations at the beginning of a new project while working on a literature review.

Let us know what you think of this new presentation! Share your thoughts or suggestions via Ask-a-Librarian or in the comments.

The Handbook of Latin American Studies also now has a web archive that includes both HLAS Online and HLAS Web as well as many of the individual sites annotated in HLAS. The essays from Volumes 50-65 are available in the HLAS Online web archive. We are also preparing datasets of all HLAS records and essays that will be available soon as part of the Library of Congress Selected Datasets collection. There’s more to come, so check back again soon!

Additional resources

Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS): A Resource Guide: The Handbook of Latin American Studies is a bibliography on Latin America consisting of works selected and annotated by scholars.
Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) Story Map: Learn more about the history of the Handbook of Latin American Studies in their Story Map.
Hispanic Reading Room: Open Monday to Friday from 8:30am to 5pm.
Library of Congress Research Guides: Library’s guides organized by research topic and collections – these include both online materials, and materials only available on site. The guides related to the Caribbean, Iberian, and Latin American Studies can be found here.

See the Collection Online: https://www.loc.gov/collections/handbook-of-latin-american-studies/about-this-collection/

Continue/Read Original Article: https://blogs.loc.gov/international-collections/2026/04/hlas-digital-collection/