Name: Sean Knowlton

Title: Latin American and Iberian Studies Librarian

Subject Specialities: Latin American and Iberian Literature, humanities and social science scholarship from and about the Caribbean, Latin America, and Iberia

Contact Info: sean.knowlton@columbia.edu; (212) 854-1679; 307 Lehman Library in the International Affairs Building

Library: Lehman Library

@Columbia Since: April 2011

Education Info: A.B. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (Spanish Education); M.A. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (Hispanic Literature); M.S. University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill (Library Science). I also studied abroad in Spain, Costa Rica and Brazil.

About me: As a librarian, I thoroughly enjoy collaborating with all scholars –undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty alike – to identify sources of information that spark new ideas and original scholarship.

What’s new at my library: Columbia University Libraries is acquiring several digitized collections of primary source materials via the Archives Unbound portal. Among these is "Feminism in Cuba: Nineteenth through Twentieth Century Archival Documents,’ a compilation of Cuban sources from Cuban independence up to the Revolution.

Personal favorite: Continuously published since 1936, the Handbook of Latin American Studies is the principal resource for scholars seeking secondary scholarship from and about Latin America and the Caribbean. Unique among scholarly databases, the Handbook is the cumulative annual work of over 130 academics who identify citations and, more importantly, provide annotations that provide critical insight into the potential impact of these sources. It is edited by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and is also available as HLAS Web (1990 onwards).

Recommended Resources: 

• Latin American Newsstand: Full-text articles from over 60 newspapers from Latin America and the Caribbean. Translate articles on-the-fly with the built-in translation tool.
• MLA International Bibliography: Citations for publications in literature, linguistics, language, and folklore.