Languages Research Guide
- Find Background Info
- Find Books
- Find Articles
- Find Internet Resources
- Citing Sources
Find Background Info
Background sources, such as specialized encyclopedias and dictionaries, are an essential piece of the research process. They can help you:
- Gather information about your topic and understand the scope of the research
- Locate reliable sources and clarify keywords
- Pinpoint important authors, texts, ideas, and keywords about the research area. Knowing what the primary phrases and concepts are will help you a lot as you are searching library databases and online sources.
Global Issues in Context
Global Issues in Contexts integrates international news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, and statistics. This is a useful database when you are doing background research of searching for a topic.
Search Global Issues in Context
World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean
World Scholar: Latin America & the Caribbean serves the needs of students and researchers by bringing together in a single place a rich collection of primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean; academic journals and news feeds covering the region; reference articles and commentary; maps and statistics; audio and video; and more.
Search World Scholar: Latin America and the Caribbean
History Reference Center
History Reference Center features full text primary source documents and informational texts for undergraduate research.
Search History Reference Center
Ethnic News Watch
This database includes full text for newspapers, magazines, and journals of the Ethnic, Minority, and Native Press.
CQ Researcher
CQ Researcher is the perfect answer for people who need a place to begin research on current topics. Celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, this weekly publication covers the most current and controversial issues of today with complete summaries, insight into all sides of the issues, bibliographies, and more. Users may browse through articles in the current issue or search for past articles using words, dates, or other criteria. The CQ Researcher is the only publication that delivers in-depth original reporting week in and week out on the topics that affect you and the world around you.
Find Books
Print and e-books are valuable sources for academic research. They will help you to gain an overview of your topic and often contain in-depth information about the scholarship or history of research on a subject. Some books are written by single authors, while others include essays or chapters by multiple scholars within a discipline. Don’t let the length of books intimidate you because you don’t need to read them from cover to cover. Look at the table of contents and index to find the sections that are relevant to your work.
Find Books Using GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other materials available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases. To get started, search by keyword or type in the title of a book here:
WorldCat
WorldCat lets you search for books, articles, videos, and other material that are available in libraries worldwide. If you are doing in-depth research on a topic and are considering requesting resources through Interlibrary Loan, WorldCat can help you discover resources that might not be in the Giovale Library collection.
Interlibrary Loan (ILL)
Interlibrary Loan is a service where patrons of one library can borrow books and other materials, and access journal articles that are owned by another library.
Explore Interlibrary Loan Materials
Utah Academic Library Consortium
Giovale Library participates in the Utah Academic Library Consortium (UALC) and Westminster College students have reciprocal circulation privileges at UALC partner libraries. Each UALC library has different circulation policies, but all require a current, valid, legal photo identification and proof of current enrollment at Westminster. Some libraries may also require other verification methods, so it is recommended that you contact the library you are interested in for details.
Popular Titles and Featured Texts

Harry Potter y el Prisionero de Azkaban

Zorro

La Sombra del Viento

El General en su Laberinto
Find Articles
The Giovale Library provides access to a number of subject databases that you can use to find journal articles on topics within a specific discipline or field of study. The databases listed on this page are those that are most useful for finding research published in the field of languages.
GriffinSearch
GriffinSearch is a good starting place if you are looking for books, journal articles, films, and other material available in the library. In addition to searching the Giovale Library catalog for physical materials, GriffinSearch finds e-books and articles from several of our databases.
General Language Databases
JSTOR
JSTOR is an interdisciplinary archive of full text articles from journals in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. It includes retrospective coverage of publications which means that a majority of the articles will be 1 to 5 years old. To search for anthropology or archeology articles, after entering your search terms, scroll down to “Journal Filter” and select anthropology or archeology.
MLA International Bibliography
Produced by the Modern Language Association, this database offers citations for journal articles, books, and dissertations concerning literature, modern language studies, linguistics, and drama.
Search MLA International Bibliography
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
This database abstracts and indexes the international literature in linguistics and related disciplines in the language sciences. The database covers all aspects of the study of language including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics. Documents indexed include journal articles, book reviews, books, book chapters, dissertations and working papers.
Search Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts
Spanish Specific Databases
Fuente Academia
Fuente Academica is a unique collection of scholarly academic journals from renowned Latin American, South American and Spanish publishers. This database provides full text and PDFs for more than 100 scholarly Spanish language journals.
Medic Latina
MedicLatina is a Spanish language collection of medical research and investigative journals published by renowned Latin American medical publishers. This unique database provides access to full text for nearly 125 periodicals, including over 50 peer-reviewed medical journals.
Informe Académico
Provides access to a wide range of full-text Spanish and Portuguese scholarly journals and magazines both from and about Latin America.
Find Internet Resources
There is a variety of internet resources freely available for students and the general population to improve their cultural understanding of Spanish speaking countries and one’s language development.
Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC)
LANIC's mission is to facilitate access to Internet-based information to, from, or on Latin America. Our target audience includes people living in Latin America, as well as those around the world who have an interest in this region. While many of our resources are designed to facilitate research and academic endeavors, our site has also become an important gateway to Latin America for primary and secondary school teachers and students, private and public sector professionals, and just about anyone looking for information about this important region.
Biblioteca Digital Hispanica
The Hispanic Digital Library is the digital library of the Biblioteca Nacional de España. It provides access free of charge to thousands of digitized documents, including books printed from the 15th to the 19th century, manuscripts, drawings, engravings, pamphlets, posters, photographs, maps, atlases, music scores, historic newspapers, magazines, and audio recordings.
Search Biblioteca Digital Hispanica
Centro Virtual Cervantes
This site was created to spread the Spanish language and its culture, which includes access to exhibitions, monographs, reference works, didactic materials for Spanish classes, discussion forums, debates, and more.
Search Centro Virtual Cervantes
Naciones Unidas
Direct access to the Spanish interface of the United Nations.
Citing Sources
Citation Resources
Properly citing your sources shows that you’ve done research to become knowledgeable about your topic and helps you avoid plagiarism. Explore citation resources to learn how to correctly cite sources based on style.
Need help with your research?
Get in touch with:
Katherine Tucker Paterson
Liaison Librarian for English
801.832.2258
kpaterson@westminsteru.edu
Librarians are happy to answer questions via email, phone, or in-person.
Contact Katherine with a question or to schedule a research help appointment.
Faculty: Contact Katherine to suggest edits to this research guide.
Chat with a Librarian
Use the chat box below to ask the library staff a question. If chat is unavailable or we don’t respond quickly, please use the email form on our Get Research Help page and a library staff member will contact you as soon as we are available.